Bruce Billson, the Small Business Minister in Tony Abbott's government, inadvertently dropped a stink bomb among his tense colleagues during the last day of Parliament last week.

Answering a benign question about petrol prices, he took a swipe at the previous Labor government's attitude to the price watchdog, the ACCC.

"What we've found under the previous Labor Government, while they're changing leaders, changing ministers, five in 15 months, they actually forgot to actually give the resources to the ACCC to do its job properly," he said, though much of the tortured sentence was quite drowned out.

He had no sooner mentioned the words "changing leaders" than the opposition benches were consumed by an eruption of thigh-slapping, delighted howling and caterwauling.

Billson's colleagues on the government benches stared into space.

There wasn't a person in the chamber - MPs from all sides, spectators in the public galleries and journalists perched like crows waiting for a carcass, as the hapless Kim Beazley once observed of such a moment - who missed the grim irony.

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/party-room-appears-to-have-already-decided-tony-abbotts-fate-20150228-13rfw3.html

From Bob Ellis...

Disaster prone Tony Abbott has moved on from being the "mad monk" to become the "loaded dog" of Australian politics, writes Bob Ellis.

It’s happening, thus far, very slowly, and for once the dull phrase "slow motion train wreck" seems to apply.

Abbott is going and Turnbull is coming, but we don’t know yet, we don’t quite know, what this means. Are we going to war in Iraq? Is the co-payment cancelled? Are we in a "debt and deficit disaster", or a "good news Budget", or what? Must we "shrink our way to prosperity", as Hockey recommends? Will Hockey be treasurer after Tuesday? Is the Abe-Abbott handshake still valid? Will our submarines come from Japan? Or can Sweden make an offer now? Will the CSIRO still lose one third of its funding? Do we believe, again, in climate change? What is happening here? How long will the slowly flying bits of the train continue to ascend into the sky? When will the long, sweet agony end?

A requiem for Abbott seems in order; or an autopsy; or something. His many false starts – a non-shotgun marriage; the non-priesthood; managing a cement factory; journalism; monarchist campaigner; minister for industrial relations; joyful father of a long lost son; opponent of the ‘morning after’ pill; co-author of WorkChoices; accuser of Slipper, Thomson, Hanson, Ellis, Ettridge — show a man wedded lifelong to coitus interruptus, getting off at Redfern, and always, always unwilling to follow things through. Every promise is a promise also to break it. NDIS. Gonski. Broadband. The ABC. He sent out the invitations to the wedding of the pregnant girl, then cancelled it. This is what he does. He always, always, always lets you down.

It’s a kind of hectic neurosis.

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/bob-ellis-requiem-for-a-loaded-dog,7428

The list of crap done by Tony Abbott would have killed off anyone else one hundred times over. But the MMMM is very kind to him... They forgive him like a priest would forgive a re-offending child molester. His past misdemeanours which the MMMM would have despatched someone like Julia to smithereens are like glazed over...

... Julia did one major thing wrong: "She did not stop the boats" and in the process got the boat people policy quite wrong... Actually she got it right but was unable to convince people that this was the way to go... The MMMM, aka the merde-och press, was haranguing the maddening crowds that boat people were bad people and unfortunately 90 per cent of the Australian population believed that.

Julia also got the price on carbon correct. But of course the MMMM led by the merde-och press did not see pass burning her to the stake because she said she would not do it — actually she said she would not implement a carbon tax: this carbon price was not a tax but part of an ETS (emission trading scheme) which worked very well in shifting the burden of carbon pollution away from consumers and helped implement alternative sources of energy...

Abbott has LIED, said 516 porkies to the electorate before the election and then recanted about 516 times. Anyone else would have been hung. Very little whispers from the MMMM... The MMMM loves TONY despite him being a liar, a thief, an idiot and an ignoramus... The MMMM loves a flawed character, they love a misogynist, they love snake oil, they BELIEVE in the resurrection... Tony is the master of ill-thought bungs and wait for it there are plenty more coming your way... More forgiveness from the media. the media is very forgiving... Not only that, the media forgets... except in the case of Julia... who got treated like shit... the time for the MMMM to treat Tony like shit started long ago, but the media driven polls gives him hope... You bastards... He will rape you some more... don't worry about that...