the short and excruciatingly embarrassing reign of captain abbott: an excerpt

7/24/2019 The Short and Excruciatingly Embarrassing Reign of Captain Abbott: an excerpt

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A N r E p S T e E


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First published in 2015

Copyright Andrew P Street 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted inany form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without priorpermission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whicheveris the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educationalpurposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) hasgiven a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin83 Alexander StreetCrows Nest NSW 2065Austral iaPhone: (61 2) 8425 0100Email: [email protected]: www.allenandunwin.com

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ISBN 978 1 76029 054 2

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Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

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mailto:[email protected]://www.allenandunwin.com/http://www.trove.nla.gov.au/http://www.trove.nla.gov.au/http://www.allenandunwin.com/mailto:[email protected]


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CONTENTS

Introduction Australia, Stop Hitting Yourself 1

1 The Gathering Storm 9

2 Meet the Motley Crew 29

3 Mandate, Mandate, Mandate! 43

4 The Right to Be a Bigot 53

5 For Those Whove Come Across the Seas . . . 69

6 Classified On-Water Matters 79

7 Putting the Coal into Coalition 91

8 No Cuts to Health 107

9 Not Your Average Jo(k)e 12110 Meet the New Senate! 137

11 Someones Getting a Shirtfrontin 151

12 We All Live in a Competitively Evaluated

Submarine 163

13 The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad

Spill Motion 177

14 Good Government Starts Today 187

15 Im a Fixer 207


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16 Whos Afraid of Human Rights? 223

17 The Hunt for Team Australia 237

18 Everywhere with Helicopter 247

19 Whither Labor? 257

20 Abandon Ship! 267

Epilogue Is This the Best We Can Do? 281

Acknowledgement Or Whos to Blame for this Book 291


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INTRODUCTION

AUSTRALIA, STOPHITTING YOURSELF

In which your humble narrator explains why he stowed

away aboard this scurvy vessel in the first place.

Democracy is a term whose origins lie in two shorter words:

the Greek demos, meaning citizen of the state, and the Old

Norse word acraser,meaning full of cracks. This is why its

universally understood as meaning rule by horribly broken

people.

In that spirit, friends, welcome to a snarky treatise on Aus-

tralian politics and the short, strange, and embarrassing rule

of one Anthony John Abbott, the nations twenty-eighth, and

arguably most foolish, prime minister.

Theres no way to sugar-coat it: the politics consumers of

Australia have been through some infuriatingly silly times

since 2013, and this book is an attempt to contextualise said

times in the hope that future generations will learn not to let

them happen again. Its possibly a vain hope, of course, since


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2 ANDREW P STREET

Australias not great with historynot least because so much

of it is based on invasion, murder and bad decisions leadingto often-bloody consequences.

Indeed, for a country whose national humour is deeply,

fiercely sarcastic, Australias surprisingly bad with irony.

Perhaps its because everything about the place reeks of

the stuff.

Our national hero is an anti-authoritarian Irish bush-ranger who defied a corrupt regime of powerful commercial

interests and an easily bought justice system to fight against

the destructive influences of poverty and discrimination.

Our nation-defining military operation was a doomed and

bungled beach assault followed by slinking away under cover

of darkness, on the orders of an imperial regime that regarded

Australians as completely expendable.

And at every sporting event our leaden national anthem is

blasted out to the world even as our immigration policies put

the lie to the noble declaration trumpeted in the notorious

second verse: For those whove come across the seas / Weve

boundless plains to share. These are the boundless plains that

were, as everyone around the world is acutely aware, stolen

by a bunch of criminals and foreign interlopers lobbing in

on boats. In 2015 such landings were illegal and immoral;

in 1788 they represented the proud birth of our plucky

nation. Even the overused phrase the lucky country, which

has functioned as Australias unofficial motto since Donald

Hornes book of the same name was published in 1964, means

the exact opposite of what it appears to convey. Unlike the


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AUSTRALIA, STOP HITTING YOURSELF 3

unambiguously bang-on title of the book youre holding now,1

Hornes was intended as a wry commentary on the nation,not a celebration of our indisputable good fortunea fact he

made clear at the beginning of the final chapter:

Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people whoshare its luck. It lives on other peoples ideas, and, although itsordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so

lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they areoften taken by surprise.

And in that spirit, perhaps the Abbott government was the

greatest possible manifestation of Hornes prescient vision.

Its a truism that Australian federal elections are never won,

only lost; but never in Australias history has a government

been elected on so strong a platform of not being the previous

one. What makes this epoch extraordinary, then, is the haste

with which the marriage of the Abbott government and the

Australian people soured. And the responsibility for that fell

at the feet of one man.

While governments have always been at the beck and callof the powerfulafter all, thats basically what powerful

meansit was almost refreshing to see a government willing

to perform with such brazen disregard for the common good.

More specifically, never before has a leader so clearly outlined

his priorities by demonstrating how little the common good

came into the equation.1 Lets be honest, you knew exactly what this book was about the second youpicked it up. Thanks for doing so, by the way. Very good of you, and dont think itsnot appreciated.


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4 ANDREW P STREET

This book tells the tale of a government that came into

office to begin what was predicted to be the beginning of aconservative epoch, not least because the Opposition was so

divided and scattered, and yet proceeded to collapse under the

weight of the exact same internecine squabbling and politi-

cal opportunism that destroyed its opponents. Furthermore,

it will depict the way that the Abbott government used a

combination of zealotry, single-mindedness and sheer gall totransform near-universal national goodwill into widespread

condemnation. In fact, this might yet be the story of how

Australian politics has come to be changed forever.

Theres an upside, though: perhaps it took the predations of

the Abbott government to teach Australia to give a shit about

politics again.

Tony couldnt have done it alone, mind. He was aided and

supported by his treasurer, the often-struggling Joe Hockey,

and a front bench principally made up of ineffectual and super-

annuated MPs and senators chosen for loyalty rather than

competence, and a back office with little interest in hearingdissenting opinion (or, for that matter, opinions at all), controlled

by Abbotts chief of staff, the formidable Peta Credlin.

Looking into what at the time seemed a deeply optimistic

crystal ball, I wrote a piece entitled Why an Abbott Victory

Would Be Good2 for the website TheVine, published a few

days before the federal election in September 2013. In that

piece I made a few predictions regarding how things would

2 http://www.thevine.com.au/life/news/why-an-abbott-election-victory-would-be-good-20130905-264996/
http://www.thevine.com.au/life/news/why-an-abbott-election-victory-would-be-good-20130905-264996/http://www.thevine.com.au/life/news/why-an-abbott-election-victory-would-be-good-20130905-264996/http://www.thevine.com.au/life/news/why-an-abbott-election-victory-would-be-good-20130905-264996/http://www.thevine.com.au/life/news/why-an-abbott-election-victory-would-be-good-20130905-264996/


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shake out in the all-but-mathematically-certain event of the

Coalition taking power:

We already know [Abbott] cant open his mouth without saying

the exact wrong thing. We already know that hes terrible on policy,

cant think on his feet and dodges responsibility. At the moment he

can largely get away with blaming the government; once hes Prime

Minister, thats not an option anymore. He will look like what he

is: a man of narrow views and narrower knowledge woefully out ofhis depth.

And look at the Abbott front bench: its a vipers nest. Theyre

not supporting Abbott because they think hes an inspiring leader,

since hes demonstrated comprehensively that hes not: theyve

backed him because the greatest strength they have had against

Labor over the last 18 months has been in presenting a united front.

Once theyre in power this bunch of smart, ambitious and shrewd

politicians are going to be a lot less forgiving of a leader whos anobvious and embarrassing liability. Hockey isnt going to fade back

into the benches. Neither is [Malcolm] Turnbull. Neither is [ Julie]

Bishop. Neither is [Scott] Morrison. Those squabbles have been

sublimated for the time being because they had a common enemy:

Labor. Once in power, theyll have a different common enemy:

each other.

At the time I wondered if I was simply whistling as I passed

the graveyard of progressive Australian politics.

After all, the centre-left Labor Party was in complete

disarray. In the event that the recently reinstated PM Kevin

Rudd somehow managed to scrape home in that election, there

was still no serious hope he would have a genuine majorityand similarly little possibility that his government would do

anything more than pander to the middle ground. Rudd was

no negotiator, unlike his immediate predecessor and rival Julia


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6 ANDREW P STREET

Gillard, and in any case the party was still riven by the leader-

ship coup that had just reinstated him as leader.Abbott, meanwhile, was declaring that the grown-ups

would be back in charge. By promising near-identical policies

to Labor on education, health, the National Broadband

Network and the National Disability Insurance Scheme,

and assuring electors they would keep a steady hand on the

economic tiller, the LiberalNational Coalition neatly delin-eated the choice between the parties: Labor offered crisis; the

Coalition offered unity.

However, barely had the new House of Representatives

formed than the government unmasked its neo-conservative

reformist agenda, one wildly different to the steady-as-she-

goes government promised during the campaign. In its battle

with Labor, the Coalition under Tony Abbott had pursued

victory with the same tenacity and zeal as a dog pursuing

a carand, similarly, had seemingly not completely thought

through the consequences of victory.

Australia has suffered under unpopular leaders before, of

course. According to their detractors, Rudd was an arrogantbully, Gillard a disloyal Judas, John Howard a fuddy-duddy,

Paul Keating a brawler, Bob Hawke a boozed-up union stooge,

Malcolm Fraser a manipulative snake and Gough Whitlam an

irresponsible idealist. However, one has to go all the way back

to Billy McMahon to find a prime minister who was so widely

considered by the electorate to be an actual fool. That is until . . .The story upon which youre about to embark is one of a

government of blinkered visionaries, superannuated also-rans

and hard-nosed opportunists; of a gun-shy Opposition, unwilling


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or unable to do more than run out the clock as the govern-

ment scored own-goals; of a ragtag bunch of ideologues andneophytes in the Senate who somehow became the conscience

of a nation, and for which they had to be punished. It is how

political reality came to the major political parties and, for the

most part, gave their legislative gonads a good, solid kicking.

Its the story of a government that turned Australia from

a pioneer in renewable energy and climate change policy toan international laughing-stock, even being rightfully criticised

by such high-volume polluters as China and the US. Its the

story of how a government destroyed Australias reputation as

a nation of laconic, friendly shell-be-right larrikins and trans-

formed us into small-minded, human rights-averse xenophobes.

Its also the story of a government that was determinedto apply to our enviable systems of socialised healthcare and

education the same free-market policies as the United States, at

exactly the same time as the US was socialising its health and

education infrastructure in a desperate attempt to rectify the

expensive, debt-heavy failures of their bloated, unsustainable,

for-profit systems.Not a bad effort for less than two years.

Its also a record of a period that I sincerely believeor,

at the very least, anxiously hopewill be looked back on as

a tipping point for the workings of democracy in this wide,

brown, sea-girt land.

For if theres one thing that the Abbott government did do,

it was to teach the world something extraordinary about our

lucky country: that we can never have things so good that we

dont still inexplicably choose to fuck it all up.

the short and excruciatingly embarrassing reign of captain abbott: an excerpt

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