Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has made an embarrassing gaffe during a visit to Tasmania, forgetting the name of the Liberal candidate for a key seat.

Mr Abbott was in Launceston to campaign with the Liberal candidate for Bass, Andrew Nikolic.

During a media conference Mr Abbott was asked to name the party's candidate for the Hobart-based seat of Denison, which is held by high-profile independent Andrew Wilkie.

But he was unable to name Tanya Denison.

"I'm afraid I'm here in Bass and I'm talking with our candidate for Bass. I'm afraid you've got me on that one," Mr Abbott said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-16/abbott-left-red-faced-over-denison-gaffe/4823802

Hi Gus,

Your right ... Tonnochio is an absolute dunce ... when he made his ignorant & flippant comment on the ETS, I actually thought he was eschewing his catholicism!!

But we should be grateful for small mercies as the big T has once again demonstrated to Australians what his true potential as a future leader really is.

Cheers,

JR

Yes John...

Out of all the pretend Prime Ministers to this glorious country, Tony Abbott is the lowest form of life... I mean it... He got the pretend job by default — with the vote of certain Mr Slipper in his favour (while two other voters got "delayed by planes being late"?)... A Mr Slipper, Tony soon tried hard to discredit... A Mr Slipper at whose wedding Tonnichio was maid of honour... Tonicchio will say anything stupid in order to get elected... and not strangely enough half of this country is stupid enough to buy his loopy crap...

Labor, despite its faults, has tried hard to stop this idiotic despotic dag to take over the running of this country... The Labor boffins had to push Gillard forth, then burnt Gillard to the stake and then they had to resurrect a smiling Mafia don. Glory for the Labor to have tried all it could to stop the worst of the worst ever to happen to this fair country: an unfair catholic idiot, as Bob Ellis describes Tony Abbott views:

It’s a smart-arse Jesuitical debating flourish which reminds us that he believes the Earth will burn soon and Christ will return to rebuild it. That the lion will lie down with the lamb and we will all join a choir singing “Holy, holy, holy” to God and Jesus on their thrones in a green outdoor amphitheatre forever in a summer that never ends — never in a billion years!

...

Abbott is more complex — about five people.

One is the earnest Catholic attracted by the sacrificial, celibate life in the service of God’s priorities, knowable by prayer. Another is a brilliant wordsmith, neglecting the Brideshead or Gatsby and he is very like Scott Fitzgerald — he should be writing. Another is the Santamarian socialist, keen to weed out Communism and purify the Labor Party. Yet another is a shifty manoeuvrer and social climber keen to prevail in the Liberal Party — the suit of clothes he is currently wearing. The final person is the egoistic maniac, who will do anything – even offer his arse, as Windsor relates – to be prime minister.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/bob-ellis-invisible-substance-gaffe-spells-abbotts-end/

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Gus: Tony appears to be what I call a schizophrenic sociopath... basically a psycho... Such characters often appear affable and normal in most situation, but give them a stick and they become Hitler... Was Hitler a psycho?

More than 40 per cent of Australians do not know how long it takes the Earth to travel around the sun, according to a new survey.

The Australian Academy of Science surveyed more than 1,500 people, asking them basic scientific questions. It found nearly 30 per cent did not know if humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs, and that 41 per cent did not know it took the Earth a year to travel around the sun. The academy's Professor Les Field says movies like Jurassic Park may be to blame for some of the strange answers.

"Dinosaurs and humans missed each other by more than 60 million years," he said. "We do have some popular TV and some movies like Jurassic Park and some terrific graphics which make these things look incredibly real. "When you see dinosaurs and humans running alongside each other and it makes it difficult for people to distinguish fact from fiction."

The survey also found a decline in young people's scientific knowledge in recent years. Back in 2010 when people aged between 18 and 24 were asked the sun orbiting question, 73 per cent got it right. But the most recent survey found that statistic had fallen to 62 per cent.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-17/science-literacy-falling-among-young-adults/4824232

the fiction writers are winning the edukashun war games... Sure... But did the dinosaurs fiddle with FaceBook, hey? I ask you...

Tony Abbott's recent rhetoric on the move to an emissions trading scheme has been artfully chosen to reveal to climate change sceptics which side of the debate he still stands on, writes Jonathan Green.

Language doesn't explain everything in politics, but it does explain some things.

And so, when Tony Abbott suggests that an emissions trading scheme is "a so-called market in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no-one", we can probably assume that he chooses his words with a degree of care.

This impression is confirmed by the fact that he repeated them immediately, so this is either a case of nasty political Tourette's or a precise statement that might reasonably by parsed for political intent.

And that intent seems clear enough: a nod to the people, both voters and those in his own ranks, sceptical of climate science, for whom the idea of "taxing air" has always been a semantic thrust at what they see as the absurdity of climate change, that so-called phenomenon, caused by things you can't even see.

It's instructive to recall the circumstances of Mr Abbott's elevation to the Liberal Party leadership, his one-vote victory over Malcolm Turnbull prompted more than anything by disquiet among Coalition ranks at Turnbull's intention to support the Rudd CPRS, a plan that rankled with the deep conservative Liberal base not because it was thought to be an inappropriate policy response to a pressing issue, but because it was any sort of response to an issue that simply did not exist.

The campaign for Abbott, marshalled by the likes of then senator Nick Minchin, was a triumph for climate scepticism, for that school of deep conservative thought that refuses to accept the scientific consensus and derides action on climate change as a greenwashed proxy for an attack on the fundamentals of the market economy, for some kind of vigorous socialism by stealth that aimed to take down the carbon economy for political rather than environmental purposes.