For the almost six years Tony Abbott and the Coalition occupied the Opposition benches in the Australian Parliament he encouraged, flattered and cajoled the mainstream media into accepting a negative view of federal government.
Now heading the federal government himself, he is reaping that which he sowed.
The real danger for the new government, a danger enhanced by a far more hostile media than confronted the incoming Rudd government, is that an impression, true or false, created now, in just a few weeks, will determine how the Abbott prime ministership is viewed for years to come. This atmosphere is made worse by internal sniping and blame-shifting, bad polling, an attempt to overreach on management and a lack of recognition of the damage that can be done in the short term that will not be overcome in the long term.
The alarm bells about the Abbott government are becoming deafening. And they are ringing around the world. What started as a rumble in Jakarta is now echoing through the capitals of every nation which has any dealings with Australia.
And it’s not hard to imagine that the first question being asked about Abbott’s Australia is: “What on earth is going on?”
What is happening is that a dramatic re-positioning of the way Australia relates to the rest of the world is under way.
A new ideology is being applied by
Tony Abbott and those with most influence on his thinking. And it is now clear that Joe Hockey is not one of those people.
It's rare, maybe unheard of, for an elected political leader to set out to put his country into even worse shape than he found it.
If such a reversal occurs, it's usually the result of war, or recession or incompetence or exceptionally bad luck, or a combination of external circumstances.
Tony Abbott might not think this is what he is doing. It might not be what he intends to do, but he needs to be aware of the likely consequences of the course he has embarked upon. Because there is no doubt he is going to leave Australia in worse shape than he found it and this is going to be especially tough on the next generation. Babies born this week will, on average, live to around 2101 we learnt from reports a few days ago. But what will their lives be like?
Just looking at two of the Abbott government's policies – education and climate change – we can confidently predict the next generation of Australians will be denied the continuous betterment to their lives that their parents and grandparents have taken for granted.
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Abbott's brazen backflip on the Gonski schools funding agreements and Christopher Pyne's extraordinary flirtation, later abandoned, with a return to John Howard's class-based socio-economic status (SES) system means today's generation will serve life sentences in whatever socio-economic group they happened to be born into.
And Abbott's bizarre notion that planting (even lots of) trees and paying polluters to be a little bit less dirty will arrest, let alone begin to reverse, the trajectory towards catastrophic climate change on which this planet is hurtling, borders on criminal negligence.
But inside the Abbott brains trust, there must surely be those who are wondering if the U-turn they've just made will come back to haunt them.
The flipside of Abbott's directness in opposition is that it makes any reversal in government stand out all the more clearly. Voters heard the promises of a new government that it would say what it means and then do what it says.
They warmed to the promise of adults being back in charge and of Canberra being straight and open with voters.
They embraced the prediction that there would be an instant fillip of business and consumer confidence. And they bought it.
Yet since the election, the reality has been decidedly less attractive.
Joe Hockey had told voters that the answer to debt is never more debt. Now he wants an unprecedented $200 billion hike in the borrowing limit.
Pyne and Abbott promised an independent speaker but installed one who has remained in the party room.
Scott Morrison promised to turn back asylum seeker boats and even buy fishing boats but has turned back none and bought back none.
And the whole thing has been cloaked in an absurd and contemptuous secrecy.
They promised before the election to be a “no-surprises” government.
But since winning power the Abbott government has lengthened its list of broken promises and policy surprises by more than one a week.
If it wasn't so serious, you'd think it was a rejected storyline for the spy-spoof TV series Get Smart.
Would you believe four years ago one of Australia's most secret spy agencies monitored the mobile phone of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his wife Ani and eight of his inner circle? And would you believe they then bragged about how clever they were in a PowerPoint presentation with the now laughable slogan "reveal their secrets - protect our own".
We share our intelligence with the US but our secrets have been revealed by security contractor and one-time CIA employee Edward Snowden, who gave 200,000 classified documents to the British press and then fled to Russia.
And it's all led to Tony Abbott's first real crisis as Prime Minister, as he comes under fire for his response to the spy bungles.
Indonesia has recalled its ambassador, halted military ties, stopped co-operation in the fight against people smugglers and frozen information-sharing on counterterrorism. Australia's most famous prisoner in Bali, Schapelle Corby, could even have her hopes for release tied up in this storm.
In Jakarta there are protests and the burning of Australian flags outside the our embassy. In Darwin, Indonesian troops taking part in war games with Australia simply walked out.
It is a disaster for Abbott, who is trying to regain control from chaos.......
IF the Government's
determination to block information on asylum seeker policy hasn't reached a
peak of absurdity it is must surely be just short stroll from that summit.
We now see Immigration
Minister Scott Morrison refusing to confirm information released by Immigration
Minister Scott Morrison.
* Photograph found at The Sydney Morning Herald
