Sure, this is the guy who knighted a prince and ate a raw onion. What did you expect?
Abbott was Australia's Trump. Thankfully he lasted in office an even shorter time than the people he replaced.
Abbott was Australia's Trump. Thankfully he lasted in office an even shorter time than the people he replaced.
Killing our nascent Fibre-to-the-Home rollout which had just begun after years of planning by the previous government. We now use problematic mish mash of slow copper instead of fibre (Murdoch wanted this so Tony gave it up for him).
Killing the mining tax for his donors. This would would have returned billions for our country. We could have begun a sovereign wealth fund like Norway who have over $1 Trillion in theirs. Australia also makes minimal profit from gas exports. Qatar exports less than us but their country profits 2600% more per year than Australia.
Domestic buyers on the east coast of Australia now pay one of the highest prices in the world for gas. Double the price our exporters are buying it for (and they have liquefaction and transport costs included).
Abbott was more our McConnell, happy to tear down political norms and standard parliamentary practice while claiming to defend it. He was a "good" opposition leader in that he basically was in opposition to everything proposed by the government, not for good reason, just because.
He didn't last long as an actual leader, because that requires positive actions, not just oppositional or destructive ones.
He won't be missed from our political domain.
When I was working on an archive project for the ABC, "tony eating onion" or some variation was the most common thing people searched for in the system when they first started using it.
… as a stunt? On a dare? Why?
More bizarre was that time he froze and didn't speak for 30 seconds when asked a difficult question by a reporter about his "shit happens" comment. Justin Trudeau did the same thing recently when asked a question regarding Trump.
Sounds like a sociopath.
His policies were regressive even for the liberal party's right, he was needlessly belligerent as PM, and I didn't like him or vote for his party. However, he wasn't an uneducated or stupid man, and he wasn't an inexperienced political outsider like Trump.