Is Abbott living in a perpetual political phantasy land unable any longer to distinguish truth from lies?

This was Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott altering political history on a whim on 28 March 2015:

Mitch Fifield, the architect of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, who will deliver a genuinely insurance-based scheme which will benefit a half a million Australians with disabilities and everyone who cares for them and which will have its head office in Geelong.

Perhaps someone should remind Abbott that the Australian Parliamentary Library clearly identifies who set the National Disability Insurance Scheme in motion and laid out its basic structure:

On 30 April 2012, the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, announced that the Government would fund its ‘share’ of the cost of the first stage of the NDIS in the 2012–13 Budget.[10] The Government’s NDIS media release accompanying the Budget states that its share includes ‘the total administration and running costs for the first stage of an NDIS’.[11] In addition the media release says that ‘states and territories that host the initial locations will also be required to contribute to the cost of personal care and support for people with disability’. At this stage, it is not clear what the Government has in mind as ‘locations’ for the first stage of the NDIS but the Commission’s proposal was for ‘regions that each contained a modest number of people who were likely to be eligible for the scheme (say, around 10 000 per region)’.[12] Commencement of the NDIS in 2013 is one year ahead of the timetable proposed by the Commission.

The $1.0 billion to be provided by the Australian Government includes:

* $342.5 million over three years from July next year for individually funded packages for people with significant and permanent disability

* $154.8 million over three years from July next year to employ Local Area Coordinators to provide an individualised approach to delivering care and support to people with a disability

* $58.6 million over three years from July next year to assess the needs of people with a disability in the launch locations

* $122.6 million over four years to start preparing the disability sector for the new way of delivering disability services

* $240.3 million over four years to build and operate an NDIS information technology system and

* $53.0 million over four years to establish a new National Disability Transition Agency to coordinate implementation and manage the delivery of care and support to people with a disability and their carers in the initial launch locations from 2013–14.[13]

During the final days of the Gillard Labor Government ABC News reported on 3 June 2013:

...the regional Victorian city has been chosen as the headquarters of the new DisabilityCare agency.

All states and territories - except Western Australia - have signed up to be part of the scheme, formerly known as the NDIS.

Once DisabilityCare is fully rolled out, the national headquarters in Geelong will employ 300 people, in addition to 150 people in the regional office......

The Barwon region of south-west Victoria, which includes Geelong, was chosen last year as one of the sites where DisabilityCare would be trialled. The trial will start on July 1 and involve 5,000 people.

Tony Abbott doing a pot-kettle-black at Victorian Liberal Party

Australian Liberal Party Prime Minister Anthony John ‘Tony’ Abbott decided to have a go at Victorian Labor Party Premier Daniel Michael ‘Dan’ Andrews with a silly one liner.

“If you can change your name, you can change your mind”  said ‘Tony’ of ‘Dan’ at the Victorian Liberal State Council meeting on 28 March 2015.

Tony not only goes by an abbreviated first name just like Dan, like Dan he uses his full name when required.

In addition, Tony comes from a family where his maternal grandfather underwent a surname change in or after 1916.

Definitely an infantile pot-kettle-black moment for Abbott.

Australian PM Tony Abbott blatantly lies to the Australian Parliament: "I never said that"

https://youtu.be/TSd58zoi4ek

House of Representatives Practice (5th Edition) excerpt from Chapter 19:

Deliberately misleading the House

May states:

The Commons may treat the making of a deliberately misleading statement as a contempt. In 1963 the House resolved that in making a personal statement which contained words which he later admitted not to be true, a former Member had been guilty of a grave contempt.127 (Profumo’s Case, CJ (1962–63) 246)

The circumstances surrounding the decision of the House of Commons in Profumo’s Case are of importance because of the guidance provided in cases of alleged misrepresentation by Members. Mr Profumo had sought the opportunity of making a personal statement to the House of Commons to deny the truth of allegations currently being made against him. Later he was forced to admit that in making his personal statement of denial to the House, he had deliberately misled the House. As a consequence of his actions, he resigned from the House which subsequently agreed to a resolution declaring him guilty of a grave contempt.....

In which Tony Abbott calls Bill Shorten "the Dr Goebbels of economic policy and Christopher Pyne accuses Mark Dreyfus of calling Abbott "Goebbels-like" in the past

https://youtu.be/dr4Ro2I-y6I

Just to make it very clear, despite what Christopher Pyne was saying to The Speaker in this video, the Member for Isaacs Mark Dreyfus never at any time referred to Tony Abbott as "Dr. Goebbels" or called him “Goebbels-like” in the House of Representatives.

It is easy enough to check using OpenAustralia.

In recent years there has only been one offender in the House and three in the Senate before Prime Minister Abbott opened his mouth on 18 March 2015 and called Opposition Leader Bill Shorten “the Dr. Goebbels of economic policy”.

Senator Ross Lightfoot (Liberal) used the sentence The spin you put on it would make Goebbels blush in May 2008,Senator Ian MacDonald (Liberal) said Goebbels would be proud of you in September 2011, MP for Moreton Graham Perrett (Labor) used the phrase Goebbels-type experiment in June 2013 and, Senator Linda Reynolds (Liberal) stated Goebbels was in favour of free speech for views he liked in October 2014.

Whatever MPs and Senators may say or imply outside of parliament is not normally the business of parliament and, it should not have been on the day though I suspect it was a factor as The Speaker, Liberal MP Bronwyn Bishop, sent Labor MP Mark Dreyfus from the House for objecting.

How the Northern Hemisphere saw the situation.....

The Independent (Ireland) 18 March 2015:

Speaker Bronwyn Bishop ordered Labour lawmaker Mark Dreyfus - one of only three Jewish lawmakers in Parliament - out of the House of Representatives for rising from his seat to angrily berate the prime minister.

Fellow Labour lawmaker Michael Danby, also Jewish, left the chamber with Mr Dreyfus in solidarity.

"There are no Nazis here and we shouldn't be making comparisons with the paradigm of the ultimate evil in politics to heighten political differences," Mr Danby told The Associated Press (AP) later.

"It's beneath him and it goes to the question of his judgment. I think a lot of his backbench will be groaning and tearing their hair out."

Mr Dreyfus later described the Nazi reference as inappropriate for a prime minister….

Peter Wertheim, executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an organisation representing Jewish community organisations, declined to comment today because of his council's apolitical stance.

But he referred AP to the council's long-standing policy statement that it: "Deplores the inappropriate use of analogies to the Nazi genocide in Australian public debate."

On 20 March 2015 Abbott tries a little 'context' in an ABC interview reported in The Age on the same day:

"Mr Abbott for a Rhodes scholar, how come you say so many stupid things? 'Lifestyle choices' has enraged Aboriginal community leaders, and yesterday, bringing Goebbels into the Parliament?" Faine put to the Prime Minister.

"I withdrew and I apologised and I did it straight away, there was no hesitation. I accept that in the context of history and the way things have developed that was an over-the-top remark and I straight away withdrew and apologised," Mr Abbott responded.

"But why do you have this foot in mouth disease, what's going on?" Faine asked.

"All of us from time to time in the heat of debate and you know how heated the Parliament can get, sometimes can go too far," Mr Abbott said.

Unfortunately for Abbott images of him laughing at the response to his remark during and at the end of the incident give lie to the sincerity of his apology.

Financial Review 19 March & 21 March 2015

So just how different are NSW Premier Mike Baird and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott?

Photograph from The Daily Telegraph, Tony Abbott (left) and Mike Baird (right)

Michael Bruce "Mike" Baird MP         Anthony John “Tony” Abbott

Liberal Premier of NSW                       Liberal Prime Minister of Australia

State Member for Manly                       Federal Member for Warringah

on Sydney’s North Shore                     on Sydney’s North Shore

Born April 1968 in Melbourne                  Born November 1957 in London

Almost 48 years old                                58 years old

Attended an exclusive private school,     Attended an exclusive private school,

King’s School                                          St Ignatius College

Bachelor of Arts (Economics)                  Bachelor of Arts (Economics)  

University of Sydney                                Bachelor of Laws      

                                                                 University of Sydney                

                                                                 Master of Arts (PPE)

                                                                 Oxford University

Studied theology with a view                   Studied theology with a view

to becoming an Anglican minister            to becoming a Catholic priest

Regent College, British Columbia            St. Patrick’s Seminary, Sydney

Member of Queenscliff Surf Life              Member of Queenscliff Surf Life 

SavingClub                                              Saving Club

Sometimes boxes for exercise                 Former recreational boxer

Lives in federal electorate                         Lives in federal electorate

of Warringah at Fairlight, NSW                  of Warringah at Forestville, NSW

Announced a budget deficit in 2014-15     Announced a budget deficit in 2014-15

in his first state budget as Premier             in his first federal budget as Prime Minister

Has a policy of privatization of                   Has a policy of privatization of

state assets                                                state assets

Supports petroleum & mineral exploration   Supports petroleum & mineral exploration

including coal seam gas                               including coal seam gas

Cut public service jobs as                           Cut public service jobs as

NSW Treasurer                                           Australian Prime Minister

Sometimes avoids press questions             Frequently avoids press questions 

after a  media announcement                      after a media announcement

"And what a pleasure it is to stand here in   “Mike Baird, my friend, my local 

front of a friend of mine –                             parliamentary colleague” [March 2013]

the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott."                “outstanding individual” [April 2014]

 [March 2015]                                               “I have known Mike for many years

"Tony and I are mates.” [February 2015]     and I know he will discharge

“If everybody had the chance to sit down     his responsibilities with integrity and 

one  on one with Tony Abbott, they would    honour" [April 2014]

come away a fan” [March 2015]

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott spoke and hysterical laughter echoed across the land

Tony Abbott is a genius.

He has proved Albert Einstein's greatest theory, propounded 100 years ago. Time and space do bend!

Mr Abbott, we learn, was pumping out metadata when he was a journalist years before journalists used the internet. He was spinning stories in hyperspace before we knew it existed.

We know this because the Prime Minister told us so on Wednesday.

"In the days when I was a journalist," he revealed to seekers of truth, "there were no metadata protections for journalists and if any agency, including the RSPCA or the local council, had wanted my metadata, they could have just gone and got it on authorisation. Look, I was perfectly comfortable as a journalist."

Mr Abbott was a journalist in the second half of the 1980s. He quit the craft in 1990.

The first commercially available internet web browser, Netscape Navigator, appeared in 1994. Internet Explorer appeared in 1995. And even then, a computer with access to the internet was scarcer in the Australian news industry than a sober lunch.

Mr Abbott, in short, had managed to bend time……

Rest of the article here.

Why do we still have Tony Abbott as Prime Minister of Australia? Perhaps we should blame rightwing Christian lobbyists

ABC News 16 March 2015:

ABC's Four Corners program has revealed the campaign was run by lobby group the National Civic Council (NCC), which emailed thousands of its members and associates, urging them to contact the Liberal MPs.

It follows the leak of a confidential message from party treasurer Philip Higginson pushing for Peta Credlin's removal as Mr Abbott's chief of staff.

The emails link to a live webpage hosted by sister organisation, The Australian Family Association, where almost 100 Liberal MPs could be contacted with a single click.

MPs described being deluged with emails leading up to the leadership spill.

"In the last few days the emails have been overwhelmingly flooding the office saying all this nonsense about leadership has gone far too far, and the emails are now overwhelmingly saying 'stick to the team you've got'," Senator Eric Abetz told ABC Hobart at the time.

Four Corners uncovered the campaign after a detailed instruction email was inadvertently sent to a Sydney barrister.

NCC vice president Patrick Byrne, who organised the email campaign, said it was effective.

"Our email campaign would've gone out to maybe 10,000 people; I'm not exactly sure and I don't have direct feedback, but I think it's had some influence," he told Four Corners.

One NCC email, obtained by Four Corners, warned about the possibility of either Malcolm Turnbull or Julie Bishop being elected to the leadership.

"Whatever his failings, the alternatives are Malcolm Turnbull, who failed as leader, and Julie Bishop, who was forced to resign as shadow treasurer due to dissatisfaction within Liberal ranks over her performance," one email read.

The emails credit Mr Abbott with holding the line on same-sex marriage and repealing the carbon tax.

The Prime Minister is held in high regard by the NCC.

Mr Abbott described its founder, Bob Santamaria, as, "my first political mentor", in his book Battlelines.

National Civic Council website here.

BACKGROUND

The Monthly April 2007:

In the aftermath of the Great Split in the Labor Party, in 1954-55, the Catholic-based anti-communist wing was driven out of all the states, other than New South Wales. The anti-communists, led by Bob Santamaria, then received the cold shoulder from Rome. They soldiered on, forming one of the most determined political forces in Australia. Through his organisation, the National Civic Council, and his newspaper column, his TV spot on the Nine Network and his regular contact with government ministers, Santamaria exerted the kind of influence which political activists and lobbyists these days can only dream of.

A Gamileraay woman has her say about Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott

Natalie Cromb writing in Independent Australia on 15 March 2015:

Tony Abbott — you, sir*, are a troglodyte of the highest order!

Let me preface my rage by saying that I appreciate different points of view and having perspectives broadened and challenged by healthy debate in a diplomatic manner. I appreciate that we all come from different life experiences that can enrich our understanding of certain situations and people. I respect everyone’s opinions as exactly that and try not to become emotional if their opinions are ignorant or offensive.

But having said that, Tony Abbott is a malevolent scum bag. He doesn’t utilise his unique position for the good of the nation, he doesn’t try to listen to the citizens of the nation to broaden his understanding of social, moral, familial, cultural and religious issues.

He pushes his agenda and, when people who actually are actively representing their electorate question his policies and motives, he makes threats and tries to circumvent the process. This sort of behaviour breaches the intent of the separation of powers, upon which this nation’s legal system was built. It is tantamount to a toddler having a tantrum in order to get a Kinder Surprise at the supermarket checkout.

Tony, you have undermined this country in every conceivable way. You say you are a conservative, but you are a radical fascist that is intellectually impotent and emotionally infantile. You cannot grasp simple concepts of decency let alone complex concepts of cultural connection and identity and yet, you say you are “comfortable with your credentials” when it comes to Indigenous Australia.

Cut the crap Abbott, you are not fooling anyone. You are a narcissistic bigot stuck in the 1950’s. You seek to marginalise and berate all that disagree with you. You seek to vilify and undermine all that stand in your way……

* I choked on my coffee as I typed that.

Tony Abbott is barking mad and the Liberal Party refuses to put him out of his misery

This is what the Australian Parliament Library stated in December 2013 about public debt in the year the Abbott Government was elected:

# General government, as defined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) comprises all government units (of local, state and national governments) and non-profit institutions controlled and mainly financed by the government.

The general government gross and net foreign debt currently stands at 14.1 and 12.3 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) respectively.

There has been no change in the gross debt, but there has been an increase of 0.1 per cent in net debt as a percentage of GDP since March 2013.

The total Australian public sector (including general government, and financial and non-financial corporations controlled by governments) gross and net foreign debt currently stands at 19.5 and 13.5 per cent of GDP respectively. Gross and net foreign debt has decreased 0.7 and 0.8 percentage points respectively since March 2013.

# The private sector is responsible for 80.5 and 75.0 per cent of Australia’s gross and net foreign debt respectively. This is an increase of 1.7 and 3.1 percentage points of gross and net foreign debt respectively since the March 2013 quarter.

On the basis of these figures Tony Abbott and his Cabinet have been crying ‘debt and deficit disaster’ at every opportunity.

Now all has changed.

This was Prime Minister Abbott quoted in the Financial Review on 18 March 2015:

Tony Abbott promised voters a "dull" May budget and is content for now with current forecasts of a net debt equivalent to 60 per cent of the economy and no surplus for 40 years.

Mr Abbott said while such a debt ratio, four times the current level, was "too high" and "we want to get it in a much better situation than that", he added "a ratio of debt to GDP at about 50 or 60 per cent is a pretty good result looking around the world".

These are graphs of Australia’s net public debt between 1981-82 and 2013-14, with projections up to 2017-18 based on the Abbott Government's first budget, and net interest payments covering the same periods:

The Guardian 9 June 2014

The difference between the historical record, the last full financial year, what Abbott promised in May 2014 and what he now expects voters to tolerate is mindboggling.

In the space of one budget cycle Abbott has altered his expectations and now predicts that net public debt will grow by an estimated 46.5 per cent over the next 39 years.

What renders his new fiscal position so bizarre is that there appears to be no economic need for the level of debt he now wants the nation to carry as the only way this level of growth in public debt could occur is if, by his own admission, the Federal Government did nothing but sit on its hands for the next thirty-nine years and introduce no new finance policies.

Indeed I strongly suspect that Australia has not carried even a ratio of 60 per cent (or higher) gross public debt to GDP since the period covering 1942-1950, when the nation was in the middle of an almost six year-long world war and then was starting to pay down war debts.

The self-styled Australian Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs* "just doesn't have knowledge"

The Sydney Morning Herald 15 March 2015:

A passionate supporter of recognition, Mr Dodson said he feared that indigenous people would fail to see value in it against the backdrop of cuts to programs, especially those supporting indigenous rangers and legal services, and the push to cut funding to remote communities.

"If moderate indigenous voices make their concerns known, many of the well-disposed Australians will say, 'If the Aboriginal people don't see much advantage or opportunity or progress in the recognition, why should we bother to take that step?'

"This is a serious matter. If you are going to recognise Aboriginal people, what is the substance of it? The substance we are seeing at the moment is this: 'We're going to close down communities, force you into assimilation kind of activities, deny your right to have sites protected, and reject your cultural base to exist.

"It's an appalling concept to be saying we want to recognise your culture and your ancient history and your continuing existence when, in fact, that continuing existence is one that, in reality, you are trying to wipe out."

Mr Dodson, 67, was the founding chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation and became known as the "father of reconciliation". He was also a commissioner for the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

After some four decades of advocacy for his people, Mr Dodson confessed he had never felt so disheartened at the direction of policy.

"I've normally been a fairly optimistic sort of individual in relation to Aboriginal affairs because there was always an avenue for dialogue with whoever was running the country, whether it was the Liberals or the Labor Party.

"Now you can't even have the debate."

He called on Mr Abbott to re-engage with indigenous leaders, saying the convening of a meeting was the crucial first step.

"We've got to get away from just thinking about program and policy and start thinking in terms of a relationship.

"Does Australia want to have a relationship with Aboriginal people, or does it not? Or does it simply want to improve the management and control systems over the lives of Aboriginal people? That's the seminal issue.

"Everything to date has been about management. How do we keep them in the reserves, isolated from the public? Then, how do we force them into some form of assimilation? And now? No one knows where it is going now.

"It's a full-on assault on those areas where languages and cultures at least have been sustained. That's a recipe for disaster because there is no evidence that people in the cities and the towns have fared any better."

Mr Dodson expressed doubts as to whether Mr Abbott was up to the task, saying the Prime Minister's remarks about those living on remote communities exercising a "lifestyle choice" highlighted his lack of understanding.

"I don't think he's capable of it, despite his good wishes or his best intentions. He just doesn't have knowledge and without knowledge he's not going to be able to do much to take the country forward around indigenous relationships and non-indigenous relationships. That's the sad part about it."

The Guardian 15 March 2015:

Tony Abbott has refused to concede that saying Aboriginal people who live in remote communities have made a “lifestyle choice” was a poor choice of words as the father of reconciliation issued a public plea to rebuild relations with Indigenous people.

The Australian prime minister has suffered near universal criticism from Aboriginal leaders over his “lifestyle choice” comments last week when he was defending the closure of Indigenous communities in Western Australia.

He has refused to apologise for the remarks and stood by them when asked if he would at least concede it was a poor choice of words.

“I’m not going to concede that. I accept people have a right to be critical of me, but I’m certainly not going to concede that,” he told Sky News on Saturday.

* "I want a new engagement with Aboriginal people to be one of the hallmarks of an incoming Coalition government and, if elected, this will start from week one with the establishment of a Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council." [Prime Minister Tony Abbott as then Opposition Leader on 10 August 2013]

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott just demolished one of his latest reasons for proposing deregulation of university fees

This was Prime Minister Tony Abbott being quoted in The Australian on 14 March 2015 concerning his desire to deregulate university fees:

Mr Abbott said just one Australian university was now ranked in the world’s top 50.

“Why not try to get two in the top 20. Unless we take the dead hand of Canberra away that is going to be extremely difficult,” he said.

It seems Mr. Abbott has either not bothered to research the issue and relied on a single recent newspaper report or he is just making things up again because he knows News Corp media is not going to challenge the nonsense he spouts.

The 2014-15 Times Higher Education world university rankings survey (covering 400 universities) lists five Australian universities in the top 100 and two, I repeat two, in the top 50 universities.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2014-15/world-ranking

Has Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott re-mortgaged the family home yet again?

Most of Tony Abbott's official declarations of pecuniary and non-pecuniary interest are lost in the mists of time.

Hansard reveals that in 1995 he admitted to Parliament that he was the beneficiary of one, possibly two, family trusts - with Etonwest Pty Ltd as trustee for one at least of these trusts. 

This company, owned by his parents, was registered in 1970 when he was twelve years old and deregistered in 2004 when he was the Federal Minister for Health and Ageing.

Media reports inform us that his 1998 declaration showed his involvement as one of three trustees for the Australians for Honest Politics Trust (created on 24 August 1998).

However, little else is now readily available before 2008, when the details of his home finance becomes of interest.

In his official Statement of Registerable Interests (22 February 2008) then Shadow Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Tony Abbott listed an unspecified joint mortgage with his wife with what is probably the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

In 2010 it came to the attention of Australian voters that as then Opposition Leader Tony Abbott had failed to declare a $710,000 mortgage on his Forestville NSW home entered into sometime in 2008 or 2009.

This mortgage was added to his official declaration of interests sometime in June 2010 and appeared to be a shared equity arrangement with the Adelaide Bank and Rismark:

On 9 December 2013 as Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott once more declared a joint mortgage with his wife on the family home, this time with the National Australia Banking Group:

For a man who earns an est. $539,338 in combined salary and allowances and who virtually lives for free as Prime Minister of Australia, with a wife who is a paid company director/manager and no dependent children, this continuous level of debt on a house purchased in 1994 is rather curious to say the least.

One has to wonder what the Prime Minister does with his money? Do they burn $100 bills just for fun in the Abbott household with little thought for tomorrow?

Abbott's march to the sea about to wreak havoc on Australian society

For Australian nationals, we are examining suspending some of the privileges of citizenship for individuals involved in terrorism.

Those could include restricting the ability to leave or return to Australia, and access to consular services overseas, as well as access to welfare payments.

[Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, National Security Statement, 23 February 2015]

Read this quote carefully. Think about it long and hard. Because Tony Abbott is talking about you. The Australian citizens descended from circa 60,000 years of blood connection with country, the heirs of those convicts and soldiers who stumbled off British ships onto Botany Bay soil in 1788, all the people at the end of a 227 year long migration stream who were born in this country and call it home.

What Tony Abbott is describing is a deliberate move to curtail your existing human and political rights under common law and the Australian Constitution.

Don’t for one moment comfort yourself with the thought that only violent terrorists, those plotting terrorism and supporters of terrorists will be subject to whatever legislation he cloaks this move with.

Coalition Governments have abused their powers in the past.

Abbott comes from the same political party which:

attempted to confiscate the passport of the wife of a Lieut. Governor & Chief Justice of NSW;

treated members of one legal political party as criminals and traitors in the 1950s;

fined or gaoled conscientious objectors in the 1960s & early 1970s;
in the 1960's began tapping the phone of a teenage Australian-born citizen, whose family first arrived in Terra Australis in 1788 and who had broken no domestic or international laws, at the behest of a foreign power that was alleged to have committed war crimes;

from 1955 to 1970 refused to register the children of an Australian national (whose family had been in the country since 1854) as Australian citizens on the basis of their parents' political beliefs; and 

on 3 November 2014 made it legal for the Australian Federal Police to enter and search our homes by stealth and if or when we eventually find out silences our objections with the threat of 2 years imprisonment.

This is not an exhaustive list of Coalition government abuses over the years.

Abbott's march to the sea in his ideological war on the populace may be as devastating for Australia as General Sherman’s was for those members of the American civilian population unfortunate enough to be in his path in 1864.

Headline of the Week

WAtoday 27 February 2015

Tony Abbott fails to understand the nature of violence against women according to campaigner

Excerpt from The Age article Tony Abbott fundamentally misunderstands the violence against women epidemic by Phil Cleary on 16 February 2014:

Political life might look profoundly different for Tony Abbott had he not stood smiling in front of those misogynist banners "Ditch the Witch" and "Julia – Bob Browns (sic) Bitch" during his push to become Australia's 28th prime minister. Imagine if he'd shown genuine leadership and courage and torn asunder the hatred of women that bristled in those banners. Instead, he and Bronwyn Bishop revelled in the attention while campaigners against the epidemic of violence wondered how he could not grasp the deeper significance of his complicity in the banners.

Had Abbott not lent his name to words that mimicked the tawdry courtroom depictions of murdered wives as bitches and witches, maybe his creation of an advisory panel on family violence would have looked like the actions of a genuine prime minister. Instead, in the absence of a documented passion for the anti-violence cause, his announcement of such a panel reeks of opportunism in the face of the opprobrium that flowed from his knighting of Prince Philip. Without as much as talking to the campaigners, the Prime Minister created a panel then offered not an original thought about the extent of the violence against women, its origins, or how we as a society might begin to deal with it.

Don't get me wrong. The former Victoria chief commissioner of police, Ken Lay, is a passionate and admired campaigner against the violence. And the symbolism of Rosie Batty's appointment, along with her experience with the institutions entrusted with the task of protecting women and children, will be invaluable.

But what's the point of an advisory panel if you're up to your neck in cuts to the funding of frontline services crucial to the safety of women? If only Abbott had committed funds to fortify and extend those services, rather than promise an unpopular, hugely expensive paid parental leave policy (now thankfully shelved). If only he'd promised to sweep away the platitudes and address the inconvenient truth that it is violence against women by men that is our problem, and that the murder of Luke Batty was an act of male revenge against a woman, as was Robert Farquharson driving his three sons into a dam in 2005 and Arthur Freeman throwing his 4-year-old daughter, Darcey, off the Westgate Bridge in 2009……

The sad truth is that we don't regard the life of a murdered wife as being as valuable as that of a child. When a child is murdered by their father, it is invariably described as an inexplicable act and the source of unimaginable pain, as if the loss of a woman to a man who claims to love her isn't equally as painful for her parents. Children are always innocent, whereas too often a murdered wife must run the gauntlet of guilt.

Faced with the opportunity to expose these contradictions and the hypocrisy, and to stare down the attitudes that have fostered the killing of women, Tony Abbott has failed to deliver the appropriate leadership. After 25 years of campaigning, I'm not interested – nor are the campaigners I speak with – in politicians or commentators who camouflage the origins of the violence, disregard the lessons of the campaign, or won't say that the problem is men. Rather than inspiring me, Abbott's decision to create an advisory panel on family violence left me believing he didn't understand the nature of the violence stalking modern women. It is just one more reason his leadership of the country is under threat.

We've come a long way since the days when violence against women was regarded as secret men's business. So far have we come that it is now politically acceptable to select the mother of a boy killed by his father as Australian of the Year. Unfortunately, like so many times in his recent political career, Tony Abbott did not seize the moment. How different it might have looked had he said he would not and could not entertain those who blame the Family Court, or mothers, for the violence of a vengeful father. If only he'd stated that it is "un-Australian" to kill your wife. If only he'd posed for a photo with the parents or siblings of women murdered by an estranged man, especially those devastated by the misogynist provocation law or the failed defensive homicide law in Victoria.

Like so many campaigners, I long for the day when the murder of 60 women a year by intimate partners, estranged or current, produces the same sorrow and outrage from a prime minister and his opposition counterpart as does the killing of a child – and inspires a condolence motion in Parliament of the kind moved for the victims in the Martin Place siege. For that day will truly mark the beginning of the end for the wife killers and bashers.