Thursday 28th of March 2024

static bumbling farters...

bumbling

Joe Hockey's tenure as Treasurer seems intrinsically linked with that of Tony Abbott, but when it comes to the upcoming budget the pair don't seem to be singing from the same song sheet, writes Barrie Cassidy.

To hear the rhetoric out of Canberra, you would think it was Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey locked in a tussle for the leadership.

The two of them are diametrically opposed on the strategy that should underpin the May budget ... and they don't seem to care who knows it.

Yet Hockey's tenure seems to be intrinsically linked with that of Abbott. He lasts only as long as the leader does. One is dependent on the other. Self interest alone should encourage a meeting of minds.

The Prime Minister told a news conference on Monday:

It was a bold and ambitious budget last year. With the wisdom of hindsight it was perhaps too bold and too ambitious. We did, with the wisdom of hindsight, bite off more than we could chew.

But I've listened, I've learnt, and I've changed, and the Government will change with me.


Yet the next day when Leigh Sales asked Hockey on 7.30 whether the Government is "persisting with those policies", Hockey said:

Well, we are ... because we have no choice, Leigh. We have no choice. Economic growth is not going to deliver a surplus.


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-13/cassidy-abbott-v-hockey-when-budget-strategies-collide/6089370

 

 

With Tony Abbott sacking

 


With Tony Abbott sacking Philip Ruddock as Liberal Party chief whip yesterday, it is certain Tony Abbott has weeks, not months, left in the top job, says Bob Ellis.

In his film of Richard III, Laurence Olivier, felled by arrows, writhes and twitches on the ground while Richmond’s soldiers jeer him. Tony Abbott is now in a similar twitching and writhing.

The numbers on Monday doomed him, but the Ruddock sacking brought forward the day of his execution. It may occur, now, before Chan and Sukumaran’s, in ten or 11 days’ time.

What is going on in the Prime Minister’s head? If the sneered response "brain damage" can be discarded – and maybe it can’t – it has to be to do with his Catholic upbringing and the consequent abiding habits of mind.

Under Catholicism, you ‘wipe the slate clean’ by Confession, and a number of Hail Marys, and all is well. You admit, with words, your sin, and expiate your sin with words and are then, being cleansed, allowed to sin again.

And to Tony Abbott, the words matter, only the words matter, and the deeds that follow can contradict them.

There will be "no more captain’s picks"; yet the meeting was brought forward, Credlin retained and Ruddock removed. He said "good government starts today", and a shambles ensues. It is revealed that child abuse occurred on Christmas Island, and like the Catholic church, he denies it, says he feels no guilt "whatsoever" and proposes to martyr Gillian Triggs for unveiling the truth: suicidal children, buggered by their guardians and bashed for talking about it.

And now we see Ruddock, past hero of ‘border protection’, auteur of the 2001 win, sacked.

It was almost certainly to do with his expression, and body language, when he revealed on Sunday it was Abbott, not he, who had brought the meeting forward, and it was, though he did not say is, a ‘captain’s call’.

It is likely now that Turnbull has about 47 votes, and five or six more will come across by the middle of next week.

And another spill vote will be put the following Monday, or Tuesday, or Thursday.

And Abbott and Hockey will go to the back bench and an early election occur, if the poll numbers surge, and they will, towards Turnbull, around Anzac Day, on April 30 perhaps; or soon after a well-crafted Budget comes down, and the Coalition’s numbers reach 49.

It is certain now Abbott has weeks, not months. He has tried the patience again of those who doubted him already and lost their regard forever. And now he is done and finished.

And writhing on the battleground.

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/tony-abbott-the-termination,7371

 

 

 


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Watching an authoritarian leader slowly drained of his authority is fascinating, in a macabre way.

This week’s spasms in Coalition policy and in Tony Abbott’s political personality are the jolting consequences of the real message from Monday’s vote: that the leadership style the prime minister and his inner circle always believed to be an asset has in fact been a fatal flaw.

Columnist Niki Savva told a story this week about Abbott rounding on young backbencher Wyatt Roy last May when he dared to suggest, at a private dinner, that the government’s broken promises were a problem, yelling that there were no “effing” broken promises and no one should ever concede there had ever been.

Last year I reported on a very similar incident at a full ministry meeting, where a junior minister asked how the government was intending to deal with the widespread view that it had broken election promises and was told by the prime minister, also in very angry terms, that there had been none. End of story.

But of course it wasn’t the end of the story for the electorate, it was actually the most important and disturbing plotline of the Coalition’s first year, and eventually the prime minister conceded he had broken promises not to cut the ABC or foreign aid. But he continues to maintain that all the other promises everyone else thinks he has broken – like not to cut health or education or pensions – he in fact hasn’t broken at all.

His ABC concession was partial, reluctant, without any admission of an actual mistake. A consensus-driven leader can grow stronger from a backdown by looking like they’ve listened and learned. When an authoritarian leader is grudgingly forced to take a tiny step backwards they just look unsteady on their feet.

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/feb/13/tony-abbotts-authoritarian-need-to-attack-just-leaves-him-looking-weak