Anthony John "Tony" Abbott has decided that contrary to popular belief he is still Australia's prime minister

This is the very arrogant MP for Warringah backgrounding mainstream media……

Sky News, 1 February 2016:

Tony Abbott has met US President Barack Obama privately in Washington, it's been reported.

The former prime minister also held secret talks with the president's spy chief, News Corp reported on Monday, noting that the meetings could irk Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Mr Abbott and Mr Obama met at an exclusive banquet on Saturday night, with sources saying the two had a very warm and intimate discussion.

A day earlier, Mr Abbott reportedly held secret talks with the US director of National Intelligence James Clapper - it's believed they discussed the war effort against Islamic State as well as broader global threats….

The Daily Telegraph, 1 February 2016, p.4:

WHO ABBOTT MET IN THE US

Barack Obama, US President

Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations

James Clapper, National Intelligence Director

John McCain, Republican senator and former presidential candidate

James Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank Credit

And the reason for this high-level foray into foreign policy?

Well, in the first instance it is bound to get up the nose of two people most likely high on Abbott’s hate list – Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.

Secondly, Abbott has been travelling during that period of the year in which backbenchers typically go on taxpayer-funded ‘study tours’ and I’m betting that these meetings (along with a photo opportunity with former presidential adviser Henry Kissinger) will form the basis of a claim that he was on just such a tour.

Snapshot from Tony Abbott's Twitter account, 28 January 2016

Thus Abbott, who in all probability was paid to speak at the Alliance Defending Freedom dinner in New York on 28 January, will be able to claim a second time for expenses associated with his recent trip.

After all, this is the man who in 2009 decided that taxpayers should fund his own book promotion tour until he was sprung and had to pay back $9,400 in 2010.

An examination by Dr. Sophie Lewis of Tony Abbott's climate change denialism first as a shadow minister, then as Opposition Leader and finally (albeit briefly) as Prime Minister

In addition to showing that the perception-based understanding of climate change and extremes adopted by Abbott (i.e., the Natural Variability Concept) is not fully consistent with the observed time series, I also show that it cannot be internally consistent….

It should however, be noted, that I have taken a subset of representative quotes by Prime Minister Abbott to constitute a simplified mental model of climate change, and Mr Abbott has provided many opinions of the physical science behind climate change in addition to the small selection of quotes used here.

[Lewis, S.C., Can public perceptions of Australian climate extremes be reconciled with the statistics of climate change? Weather and Climate Extremes (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2015.11.008i]

Some of the Abbott quotes discussed at length in the study and set out briefly here:

* During the record-breaking spring temperatures in Australia in 2013, Abbott said, "… the thing is that at some point in the future, every record will be broken, but that doesn't prove anything about climate change. It just proves that the longer the period of time, the more possibility of extreme events". Other public comments by Prime Minister Abbott about climate change and variability include that the argument behind human-caused climate change is "absolute crap", that "there doesn't appear to have been any appreciable warming since the late 1990s" and that the link between climate change and extreme Australian climate events is "complete hogwash" (Readfearn, 2014). 

Former Prime Minister Abbott's understandings of climate change and variability are not unique. Rather, these provide an encapsulation of a widely held view that the longer the period of time under consideration, the greater the possibility of extreme events. Abbott's comments are selected here for exploration as they demonstrate a widespread mental model of understanding and are capable of being highly influential. These personal understandings of climate change arise from several causes. First, the manifestation of climate change in weather and climate is typically poorly understood (Trenberth, 2011). In general, people have difficulty perceiving changes in the physicals climate system above the natural variability of local climate (Myers et al., 2012)…..

* On October 30 2013, Prime Minister Abbott stated, "… the thing is that at some point in the future, every record will be broken, but that doesn′t prove anything about climate change. It just proves that the longer the period of time, the more possibility of extreme events". 

A statistical interpretation of this statement is that the sequence of observed temperatures fails to satisfy the assumption of being identically distributed and independent. If the assumption of IID were the case, then the "possibility" of an extreme would be less likely in 2013, and in 2014, than in the early part of the observed sequence…..

* In October 2009 Prime Minister Abbott stated that the argument behind human-caused climate change was "absolute crap." Later in December 2009, Abbott stated that "there doesn't appear to have been any appreciable warming since the late 1990s" and in July 2007 that "there may even have been a slight decrease in global temperatures (the measurement data differs on this point) over the past decade". 

That is, in these statements Abbott rejected that an increasing trend in temperatures has occurred in the sequence of observations in recent years. Hence, these particular statements by Prime Minister Abbott are in apparent contradiction in terms of explaining the increase in record-breaking in the later part of the observational record. If climate change is "absolute crap" and "there doesn't appear to have been any appreciable warming" then the probability of recent record breaking should be lower with an increasing length of temperature time series.

* Prime Minister Abbott concluded in October 2013 that the link between extremes (in this case bushfires) and climate change was "complete hogwash" and that "I'm not one of those people who runs around and says every time there's a fire or a flood, that proves climate change is getting worse. Australia has had fires and floods since the beginning of time. We've had much bigger floods and fires than the ones we've recently experienced. You can hardly say they were the result of anthropic [sic] global warming." 

Hence, to hold an internally consistent viewpoint within the Natural Variability Concept, the increase in the rate of record-breaking requires either a change in the shape of the temperature probability distribution with time that can be attributed to natural climate mechanisms, or requires that record-breaking rates have increased because temperatures are auto-correlated due to natural physical climate mechanisms such as thermal feedbacks between the ocean and atmosphere, sunspots and volcanic activity (Bassett, 1992).

* This does not, however, suggest that understandings developed under the Natural Variability Concept can be readily changed by simply viewing this conceptualisation as a deficit of knowledge. For example, former Prime Minister Abbott said in July 2009 that he was "…hugely unconvinced by the so-called settled science on climate change". 

Hence, this mismatch between an individual's perceptions of the climate change and extremes, and the physical evidence of the observed and modelled climate system, is undoubtedly complex and cannot be resolved simply with a singular approach…..

Interested readers can go to http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212094715300293 and view or download an open access full copy of the 10 page study with diagrams.

What the author¹ said about this study in The Guardian on 23 January 2016:

The first way to understand Abbott's claim is that in any system, the longer you wait, the more often you will see records fall. 

But Lewis points out that the exact opposite is true. 

In a system without any sort of trend, such as a random string of temperatures, the first one will be a record-breaker, by default. 

The second one will have a 50% chance of being a record-breaker. 

The third has a one in three chance of being a record breaker … and so on. 

In a very long temperature series, you should see very few records being broken, and they will break less often over time.

Unless, of course, there is a warming or cooling trend.

Alternatively, Abbott might simply have meant there was no connection between extreme heat records and climate change. 

Instead, natural variability might be to blame: natural variability includes things such as the El Niño phenomenon, which push temperature around year-to-year.

To test if that might be the case, Lewis ran a series of climate models in which the greenhouse effect was removed – so all that was left was natural variability. Unsurprisingly, in those models, high temperature records were less common than they are in reality. In other words, the record-breaking that we have seen cannot be explained by natural variation.

"It drives me mental that these sorts of statements go unaddressed," Lewis says. 

She says scientific literature generally tries to simply explain what is happening, ignoring misunderstandings in the public sphere.

"This was an attempt to bridge that gap."

1. Dr. Sophie Lewis is Research Fellow in the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics group at the Research School of Earth Sciences, as part of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. From 2011-2014, she was a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her PhD was awarded in 2011 from the Australian National University, this investigated long-term changes in the Australian monsoon system.

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