On the contrary, he is engaging, neither stiff like John Howard nor cold like Kevin Rudd, nor self-important like many politicians. Many of his old friends from university days and the seminary hate his politics yet like the man. He has a talent for friendship. And he enjoys nothing better than civilised argument with ideological foes.

"He's not the Liberal from central casting," says his friend, Christopher Pearson, Australia's most famous right-wing gay. When he first met Abbott about 16 years ago, he, too, had expected "a Liberal Party bovver boy, one of those who always enforces the party line and for whom any doubt is almost disloyalty".

Instead they enjoyed lively discussion over ''three or four bottles of wine'' after which, to Pearson's amazement, Abbott went for a 10-kilometre run to ''clear his head''.

But will the real Tony Abbott please stand up? He has become a champion of working mothers to the surprise of former colleagues familiar with his ingrained views on the role of women. Only a few years ago, the Herald was told, he kept asking senior female bureaucrats: ''Isn't this gender thing fixed yet?''

He was determined to have a son, old friends report, but his strong-minded wife, Margie, who sold financial products for Rothschild Bank before she had children, was raising three girls under four as a single parent while he was in Canberra. She said: ''No more.''

In 2002 Abbott was one of the chief wreckers of a modest paid maternity leave plan the then sex discrimination commissioner, Pru Goward, put to the Howard government. "Compulsory, paid maternity leave? Over this government's dead body, frankly," he said. He misrepresented it as an impost on business.

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Tony says a lot of things that could appear "honest" but one has to remember that this fellow is ultra-conservative, has a team of ultra-conservatives behind him — and that Tony will say ANYTHING to get elected... We know from past experiences he's not to be trusted one ounce of one iota... He admits he tells porkies... Yes, the snake oil merchant of the Liberal party is alive and spruiking, wooing the masses to buy his crap...

I know sociopaths with better morals....

From Unleashed

...

During the Howard years, the size of the Australian government actually increased as a measure of GDP, but all those extra tax dollars were largely churned back to working taxpayers in the form of payments to families, and to private schools, private hospitals and private health insurers. Paradoxically, choice became a justification for government subsidy. Hence, despite the billions given to the private sector in tax breaks and other government subsidies, when a government did decide to invest billions into our nation's primary schools, the effort was mercilessly assailed by the Liberal Party and the conservative media.

It is understandable, given the instability of public institutions, that many of us have decided that the best way to sustain a quality of life for ourselves and our families is to make as much money as we can. After all, if we've bought a house in Australia's absurdly overpriced housing market, making as much money as we can is now almost a necessity. Australia's sky-high house prices and the crippling mortgages they entail are the root cause of the current anxiety over the cost of living. And yet, despite the smoking ruins of the US economy clearly visible across the Pacific, neither major party is intellectually equipped to see the house bubble for what it is.

Another trend in this atrophy in the public conversation has been a hardening of attitudes on the right, even as the left has become more hesitant and apologetic. This lopsided polarisation is why many have now come to believe that government spending programs like the schools stimulus are wasteful, even when two independent and rigorous studies show it wasn't. It surely also underlies the ant-scientific attitudes of many conservatives, to the extent where a recent survey can reveal that only 38 per cent of right-of-centre Australian politicians believe in human-caused global warming, and only 56 per cent of all politicians trust the IPCC.

No wonder, then, that the best election coverage of this campaign is to be found on an advertising show: the ABC1's Gruen Nation. Last night's episode was a case in point, canvassing the campaign tactics, media buys and advertising techniques that appear to be what this election is really about. When substantive policies are thin on the ground, when great moral challenges are cause for delay and procrastination, and when even the audience at a campaign debate can be accused of being biased, it's not surprising that the most insightful political analysis comes from a panel of ad-men.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2981449.htm
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The structure of a society... Staying above the democratic watermark...

There are doers and investors, loafers and hard workers. But we all know that in some activities we can work hard for 10 hours for no result when we can perform with brilliance in 10 minutes. There are things that are tangible and things that can wait. Things that have to be fixed and things that are just entertainment...

Now, for example Tony the little Lib+*$#@ is planning to reward the "best teachers" with dosh... On the surface it could look fair enough... But when one looks at the details, one can ask "how one decides that a teacher is better?"... Are teachers better in private schools because of the "quality of students"? Is teachers' ability linked to the dregs they get as students? Should poorly skilled teachers be employed anyway? Is there any such things as average or poorly skilled teachers? How can one "decide"?. What is the proportion of top teachers to good teachers? Will most teacher if not all try to be the "best" and Tony would have to fork out ten times then amount of dosh? Would it be really difficult to discern who are the best teachers without creating resentment amongst colleagues? Or isn't this an underhanded way to bring back "private" workers contracts? Tony, you're a sneak... I can smell PorkChoices again...

I am a doer... I have rarely invested including invested in myself... I am poorer for it. I don't know how to make money out of "money". In some ways I find the concept borderline. But as a doer I do not want to be a slave either. At least with the Loony Left, one has a chance to get rewarded and share without being "enslaved" too much. With the  Lib+*$#@, one is left at the mercy of mendicancy, unless one can swiftly climb the sociopath ladder by walking on the other people's toes. I know this view here is simplified but distilled with accuracy.

Presently, the best for Australia is to go with "Bluey" rather than "Phoney". I rest my case.