Tony Abbott's character revisited

It’s hard to look at this deliberately posed photograph and not wonder if the person depicted is likely to be a violent bully who makes life miserable for anyone who opposes him and, sadly, there is some foundation for that worry in the continuing reports of what Australian Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott was like in earlier years.

Michelle Grattan writing in The Age 13 September 2012:

A SYDNEY barrister, David Patch, has corroborated a woman's claim that Tony Abbott behaved in an intimidatory fashion when she beat him in a vote for Sydney University Student Representative Council president in 1977.

Mr Abbott has denied the account from Barbara Ramjan - published in David Marr's Quarterly Essay, ''Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott'' - that he came within an inch of her nose and punched the wall on either side of her head.

But Mr Patch, who won the SRC presidency in 1975, said he had been Ms Ramjan's campaign manager in 1977, and she had told him about the Abbott incident immediately after it happened.

He writes in today's Age: ''I did not see the incident, but I was nearby. The count had just finished. Barbara found me. She is a small woman, and Tony Abbott was (and is) a strong man. She was very shaken, scared and angry. She told me that Tony Abbott had come up to her, put his face in her face, and punched the wall on either side of her head.

''So, I am a witness. Barbara's immediate complaint to me about what Abbott had just done had the absolute ring of truth about it. I believed Barbara at the time, and still do.''…..

The wall-punching event was not an isolated one, he writes. ''As President, Ramjan chaired SRC meetings. She did not want to be called 'Mr Chairman', but preferred 'Chairperson'. But for an entire year Abbott called Ramjan 'Chairthing' whenever he addressed her at SRC meetings.

''The gender-based disrespect for her office and her person is remarkably similar to the disrespectful way that Abbott treats the Prime Minister, and her office, today.''….

Mr Abbott told Marr he had no recollection of the wall punching and said ''it would be profoundly out of character had it occurred''. It was later that he hardened this up to a complete denial. He also denied a claim made this week by a woman who ran against him for the Democrats in 2007 that when she was handing out how-to-vote cards he put his face an inch from hers and grunted…..

Abbott aspires to be Australia's next prime minister. On 30 June 2012 in an Address to the 56th Federal Council of the Liberal Party of Australia he stated:

So ladies and gentlemen, I am not asking the Australian people to take me on trust but on the record of a lifetime and an instinct to serve ingrained long before I became opposition leader: as a student president, trainee priest, Rhodes Scholar, surf life saver, volunteer fire fighter, as well as a member of parliament and as a minister in a government.

I intend to take him at his word and consider his entire life before going into the polling booth.