Tony Abbott is a national embarrassment and the worst prime minister, by a long margin, I have had to endure in my entire life. Almost certainly he is Australia's worst prime minister ever.
I've heard it said that he combines the intelligence of George W Bush with the compassion of Margaret Thatcher. I suppose this statement was intended as an insult, but it's actually flattery since he is inferior to both of his role models in these respects.
He is a pathological liar. He is sufficiently bereft of empathy that I suggest he would meet the clinical definition of a psychopath. He doesn't think things through, believing he can make things up on the spot, yet he can't think on his feet either. He is cowardly and violent; an archetypal bully. He is spiteful. He panics easily. He is not suited to wielding any sort of power.
The media banged on and on about Julia Gillard's "lie" (which amounted to a tedious hair-splitting argument about whether an Emissions Trading Scheme counted as a Tax or not). They don't do this about Abbott. This is partly down to media bias, but also because Abbott has told so many lies it's difficult to know where to even begin. If you try to highlight just a few lies, you end up ignoring, and by implication accepting, scores of other equally bad examples of dishonesty. People have had to resort to listing his lies and the lists run into the hundreds. Check out Tracking Abbotts Wreckage; you will notice that the page is very slow to load, presumably because of its length.
His beliefs, in so far as you can tell what they are through the screen of lies and contradictions, are a mixture of the bizarre and frightening. When someone considers it an important reform to bring back knighthoods, or spend $250m putting chaplains in state schools, you really have to wonder what century they think they're living in.
For a while I was wondering whether there was more to his actions than met the eye; that beneath a veneer of jaw-dropping incompetence there was some deep and cunning scheme afoot. After all, it's not a trivial task to become Prime Minister. You surely have to a reasonably high level of brain power to be able to plot and scheme your way right to the top.
For instance, putting refugees in (what amounts to) death camps is totally evil and the sort of thing that should have those responsible up before an international tribunal, charged with crimes against humanity. Even if you had no morals, it's still undesirable in that it's an extremely expensive and inefficient option, which also breaches international law and therefore weakens your hand internationally.
Yet there are logical reasons why an intelligent (if totally unscrupulous) person might still go down this path. It's Fascism 101; if you demonise a group, you can blame them for any of society's problems, and you can appear strong - even heroic - by taking tough action against them. The benefits in this regard might well outweigh the costs.
Similarly, smashing up a government enterprise or destroying an industry might also be a rational decision if your mates can loot the wreckage.
However, the damage being done is too wide-spread for that, and the only possible scheme that seems compatible with his actions is if he were an anarchist/libertarian (or possibly even an agent of some rival power), who is selflessly sacrificing his image to destroy the state apparatus, bring the country to its knees, and tarnish forever the office of prime minister. But this doesn't seem likely; especially the self-sacrificing part.
So when am I going to get on with defending him?
Actually, I did a Tony Abbott here; that is to say, I lied. At least, I'm not going to try to find some creditable aspect of his personality that has hitherto been overlooked, and claim that as a consequence we should think less badly of him. While he may indeed have some positive characteristics (although discovering them would be like panning for gold in a sewage pond in the middle of summer), I am going to make a different point:
By concentrating on how loathsome Tony Abbott is, we run the serious risk of underestimating how bad the rest of his government is.
The destructive and idiotic policies he is trying to implement are in the main part Coalition policies. Abbott is obviously just a tool; a puppet, elevated to his current position by external forces. While some of his most idiotic ideas seem to be of his own making, he is in general following a script laid down by others.
And in this respect, he is typical of the current cabinet. Hearing Joe Hockey speak about how he finds windmills "utterly offensive" and "a blight on the landscape" brought this home to me. Hockey doesn't strike me having any aesthetic sensibilities at all and in reality probably wouldn't even notice a wind farm if he were chauffeured through the middle of one every day. He is obviously just regurgitating words put into his mouth by others.
If, as seems likely, Abbott gets a knife in the back some time soon, we should not be relieved that we have exorcised this demon. Whoever replaces him might quite easily be worse.
Imagine if we got someone who was a little bit cunning; smart enough to hide their intentions a little better and who was able to swallow their pride enough to negotiate with others.
Imagine if Abbott had been able to get Jacqui Lambie on side - and surely it would not be an onerous task for a warmonger to get an ex-military cop on side - he would not now be crippled by a hostile senate and he could get even more nasty legislation passed. In fact, imagine if he'd been able to negotiate with Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor (both closer in ideology to the Coalition than Labor) after the previous election - he could have formed government in 2010.
To make an analogy with the Game of Thrones; if Abbott were Joffrey, Scott Morrison would be Ramsay Bolton and Malcolm Turnbull would be Lord Baelish. Julie Bishop might be Cersei. [edit: I was also going to link Peter Dutton to Hordor, but Hordor was strong, good-natured and fulfilled a useful role.]
Swapping one of these for another is hardly cause for celebration.
I've heard it said that they wouldn't dare to replace Abbott after all of outrage they confected when Rudd was "knifed" by Gillard. And especially not by Bishop, who shares many of Gillard's characteristics (unmarried woman, no children, ex-lawyer, etc.) that the media attacked so fiercely. Sympathetic to the coalition though they are, the media wouldn't stand for it.
Like Hell they wouldn't!
They'd do a 180 degree turn so fast that the fillings would fly out of their teeth.
I can just see the Murdoch media now: Abbott would be portrayed as stepping aside gracefully in a statesman-like manner, and Bishop will reluctantly take the helm. It will all be because he was unable to sell his wonderful policies to the ignorant proles who don't understand what's good for them. He will be a martyr. Bishop will be a hero. The word "knifing" will never be uttered. If Rudd and Gillard are mentioned at all, it will only be to contrast the "civilised" and "adult" behaviour of the coalition to the "shambolic" and "vindictive" way the ALP handled a similar situation.
And of course, you'll see the media become ardent feminists overnight; at least in so far as this allows any criticism of Bishop to be written off as a misogynistic attack.
The beauty of the situation, at least from the point of view of the Coalition, is that those in the ALP have virtually no way to use this "knifing" to their advantage. Since the ALP defended Gillard in this same situation, they can't turn around and attack Bishop without having their own words turned against them. They can rail against media double standards of course, but that can simply be dismissed with the remark: "they would say that, wouldn't they".
Anyway, I'm not any good at predicting these things, but I'd be surprised if Abbott doesn't feel the cold steel between his shoulder blades within the next few months. And my money would be on Bishop wielding the knife.
If this happens, don't expect things to get any better; Abbott is merely the symptom, and not the disease.
