In August last year, Prime Minister Tony Abbott thought it would be a good idea to send 1000 Australian soldiers to Ukraine. Their intended purpose was to guard the crash site of the Malaysian Airlines plane that was shot down there killing 38 Australian citizens.
The proposal was quietly dropped after military planners advised that, as none of the troops could speak either Ukrainian or Russian, and would not be able to tell the difference between the militias of either country, it was not such a great idea after all.
In November, Abbott was reportedly at it again, this time suggesting an invasion of Iraq with 3500 ground troops to “shirtfront” the Islamic State in the north of the country.
The military advice was that such a venture would be “disastrous”, so Abbott instead started work on his brilliant idea of awarding a knighthood to the spouse of the British monarch. When he announced this “captain’s call” two months later, it led to a motion for a leadership spill, which was supported by 39 members of the parliamentary party.
We owe this news about Iraq to John Lyons, associate editor of the Murdoch media flagship, the Australian. In an extraordinary series, which pillories Abbott’s chief of staff, Peta Credlin, we are told that Abbott is so dispirited these days that he spends a great deal of his time sitting in his office reading Winston Churchill and ruminating on what he might do about national security and the Islamic State.
After the spill motion, another Australian columnist, Greg Sheridan, a long-time confidant of Abbott, wrote that Credlin had to go because of the poisonous relationship she had cultivated with just about all of the MPs in the Liberal Party.
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch himself tweeted that Credlin should be sacked and, according to the Australian series, headlined “In Command and out of Control”, there is now a new verb being used in the Liberal Party. It is called “Credlined” which apparently means “to be beheaded” by Credlin.
Murdoch’s News Corps seems to have decided on an all-out assault on Credlin, blaming her for the government’s problems and low ratings in opinion polls. They quote an unnamed minister as saying that if Abbott doesn’t sack her, the party will sack him.
It is fanciful to suggest that the Abbott government is on the nose simply because of Credlin — and nothing to do with policies punishing refugees, university students, pensioners, the unemployed and underemployed, the sick and attacks on unions — but the series seems designed to deliver her scalp.
We are told that she was a key architect of the budget and that Credlin and Abbott operate as a duumvirate who run the country as co-prime ministers.
This implies that Abbott is not up to it on his own. According to a “seasoned political observer”, the qualities that make Abbott such a delightful dinner companion — after the second bottle of Shiraz that is — “could well make him unsuitable as prime minister”.
Abbott’s denial of the News Corps report about Iraq was disingenuous. His assertion that he had not sought “formal advice” on the deployment of 3500 troops to Iraq was met several times by journalists inquiring whether he had “informally” sought advice or examined the idea. No answer was the firm reply. The Australian stood by its story, whose source could only have been a senior member of the Liberal Party.
Abbott then held a press conference with NSW Premier Mike Baird to release the joint federal-NSW report on the December Martin Place siege and to foreshadow the appointment of a counter-terrorism “czar”. Returning to the safe ground of national security, Abbott warned of a new, long-term era of growing terrorist threats.
Perhaps he took his cue from reading Winston Churchill’s famous wartime speech which begins with, “we shall defend our island whatever the cost may be ...”
Demonising the Muslim community, which has been targeted by authorities and sections of the community since the introduction of anti-terrorist laws last year, seems to be part of the plan.
A joint statement released by 64 Muslim organisations and 42 community and religious leaders accused Abbott of bullying the Mufti of Australia, Dr Ibrahim Abu Muhammad, and Islamic groups critical of the government.
The statement said the anti-terror laws “have been used to justify opportunistic raids on Muslim homes, have created media and community hysteria where in the majority of cases no crime was committed, and have created a distressing and harmful backlash towards Muslims, especially women and children.”
Abbott survived the leadership spill, but there is apparently a view in the parliamentary party that he was given a stay of execution and just a few months to turn the opinion polls around.
There is said to be a debate taking place about the effect of Abbott’s appalling performance on the fortunes of the NSW Liberals at the March state election. Some are said to be worried that he will be a negative factor in several seats in an election. Others argue that removing Abbott before the election could lead to defeat at the NSW polls.
Fairfax media has claimed that seven ministers who voted for Abbott in the spill motion have now changed their minds and decided it is time for him to go. The only issue is when.
The Liberal leadership debacle is a re-run of the ALP under Rudd and Gillard. It seems that the hollowing out of politics that comes from two nominally opposite parties united on neoliberal economics is a shared belief that leaders are salespersons whose worth is judged by opinion polls.
What neither party seems to get is that it is what they are trying to sell that is the problem.
Abbott is no doubt consoling himself with a supply of Shiraz, admiring Churchill’s inspiring words, “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”.
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