Engel's word picture of the Australian Federal Parliament and Tony Abbott in 2010

Only the British media would approach the subject with this much bile, but there is more than an element of truth in Matthew Engel's article Up a Gum Tree in The Financial Times on 26 November 2010:

I have seen a few crazy parliaments. I have watched the Israeli Knesset, where one extreme would happily exterminate the other – and the Dáil in Dublin, the only known gathering of inarticulate Irishmen. I have seen the empty shell that constitutes the US Senate. I have done time at the Commons, and been appalled by the pathetic lack of individuality of the whipped curs. I thought I was unshockable. But Canberra’s House of Rep­resenta­tives is the worst. These curs only snarl as instructed.

Some of the kindly journalists in the Canberra press gallery asked me what I thought. This being a country that prides itself on candour, I told them. They looked at me as though I were crazy. “You should have seen it a few months ago,” they said. “It’s improved no end.”....

Unless they swing round, which Tony Abbott does all the time, turning his back on the PM to confer with his colleagues – especially when she is speaking, a gesture of contempt that would be recognised among primates. There is indeed something rather simian about Abbott: he is a hulking fitness fetishist-cum-exhibitionist, often photographed in the skimpy swimming trunks that Aussies call “budgie-smugglers”. The other week he was spotted running through the parliamentary corridors, past the coffee shop, in his tight black shorts: “It was like watching evolution in reverse,” said one latte drinker........

Under all the circumstances, Australian democracy is a kind of miracle. The country has a remarkable respect for the rule of law and a great sense of civic responsibility (greater than Britain’s, I would say). Quietly, good work does get done in parliament – speaker Harry Jenkins insists – although much of the legislative scrutiny is done by the less powerful Senate. The federal structure ensures that the decisions that affect people’s daily lives are largely made by the individual states.

The entire article can be found here.