By @Thefinnigans
April 1, 2013
MARGO: @TheFinnigans is a friend from Webdiary days, and he’s been a serious supporter of my return to journalism for a while. He says he compiled this list of what he feels are some of Tony Abbott’s character questions in honour of my first venture back unto political writing for many years, A question of character. Thanks, Finnie, for everything. His first list for @NoFibs, published in She’s still standing but the media is blind, is our most popular post.
Tony Abbott, 29/11/2012 – on PM Gillard: ‘She had been a dodgy and unethical lawyer. The criticism was not about gender; she had failed the character test’.
Susan Mitchell – Tony Abbott is a bully who hates women, and his outdated social views are a threat to national cohesion and plurality, according to a polemical new book. In Tony Abbott: A Man’s Man, academic and writer Susan Mitchell attempts to deconstruct the Opposition Leader’s beliefs and character so that Australians ‘think again’ about the man who came within a whisker of forming government after last year’s general election.
David Marr – Oct 10, 2012 – David Marr talks to The Global Mail’s Mike Seccombe about his Quarterly Essay Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott. Tony Abbott’s values are old fashion rock solid 1950s Catholicism, that essentially it. He is essentially an old fashioned Catholic.
Marr Unmasks Abbott from Digital Global Mail Limited on Vimeo.
Laurie Oakes: Tony Abbott has a credibility issue – LET’s not beat about the bush. Tony Abbott tells lies. So what? Is there anything surprising about that? After all, he’s a politician. But it needs to be pointed out because the central message from Abbott supporters is that the Prime Minister is the liar – Ju-liar, in fact, according to the likes of Alan Jones. The Opposition Leader is portrayed – and portrays himself – as the epitome of honesty. A man whose word can always be trusted.
Tony Abbott’s Character:
00/00/1976 – Tony Abbott kicked in a glass panel door after a narrow defeat in the University Senate elections in 1976.
00/00/1977 – He came up to within an inch of my nose and punched the wall on either side of my head … It was done to intimidate (Barbara Ramjan)
00/00/1977 – Abbott’s famous flying squad of goons crashed down the stairs, threw me against the wall, kicked in the doors of the SRC, and started creating havoc
00/00/1977 – Confess to calling Barbara Ramjan a “chairthing” rather than chairperson
00/00/1977 – Lawyer David Patch: ‘Tony used to stand outside the women’s room with his right-wing mates and loudly tell sexist and homophobic jokes’.
00/00/1978 – Abbott allegedly throwing a punch and hitting Peter Woof at Sydney University
00/00/1978 – Was allegedly caught doing unethical or perhaps illegal things like changing the locks on the student union offices and other things
00/01/1978 – Charged with indecent assault of Helen Elizabeth Wilson
00/00/1979 – Lindsay Foyle: He decided the quickest way to settle our differences was to take me downstairs and demonstrate how I was wrong by punching my head in
16/10/1995 – Euthanasia is not about the right to die; it is about the right to kill
00/00/1997 – Father Nestor (convicted pedophile) – He was . . a beacon of humanity at the seminary
00/00/1998 – If it’s true … that men have more power, generally speaking, than women, is that a bad thing?
00/00/1998 – But what if men by philosophy or temperament are more adapted to exercise authority or to issue command?”
10/08/1998 – So there was never any question of any party fund being offered to Terry Sharples? Abbott:Absolutely not.
24/06/2000 – Tony Abbott was thrown out of Parliament because he moved in a threatening manner towards the Opposition benches just after Labor’s Graham Edwards, a legless Vietnam Veteran, had interjected: ‘You’re a disgrace’.
02/07/2002 – A bad boss is a little bit like a bad father or husband … you find that he tends to do more good than harm.
22/07/2002 – Compulsory paid maternity leave: over this Government’s dead body, frankly. It just won’t happen (see 01/08/2010 )
17/03/2004 – Abortion has been reduced to a question of the mother’s convenience
17/03/2004 – Abortion is the easy way out
06/09/2004 – Will this Govt commit to keeping the Medicare+safety-net as it is now in place after the election? Abbott:Yes.
06/09/2004 – That’s a cast-iron commitment? Abbott:Cast-iron commitment. Absolutely.
00/00/2005 – I want to make it clear that I do not judge or condemn any woman who has had an abortion, but every abortion is a tragedy and up to 100,000 abortions a year is this generation’s legacy of unutterable shame
12/06/2005 – You don’t have to be a Catholic to be troubled by the current abortion culture
31/08/2005 – If we did that we would be as dead as the former Liberal leader’s political prospects (John Brogden)
15/11/2005 – I conclude that there is no reason, based on the report from the Chief Medical Officer, to change longstanding practice in regards to RU-486.
30/10/2007 – Just because a person is sick doesn’t necessarily mean that he is pure of heart in all things (Bernie Banton)
31/07/2007 – That’s bullshit. You’re being deliberately unpleasant. I suppose you can’t help yourself, can you? (Nicola Roxon)
19/03/2009 – Adopt a sort of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy about homosexuals in the Catholic church
27/07/2009 – I am, as you know, hugely unconvinced by the so-called settled science on climate change.
27/07/2009 – It was, after all, the mechanism for ETS ultimately chosen by the Howard Govt
29/07/2009 – I also think that if you want to put a price on carbon, why not just do it with a simple tax?
21/12/2009 – I regard myself as an environmentalist
21/01/2010 – I’ll turn back every boat
27/01/2010 – I would say to my daughters if they were to ask me this question, their virginity is the greatest gift
02/02/2010 – The climate change argument is absolute crap
08/02/2010 – What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing
11/02/2010 – We just can’t stop people from being homeless if that’s their choice
20/02/2010 – I don’t bring religion into the square the way Rudd did and does. I am Catholic.
20/02/2010 – Yeah, look, I don’t regard myself as God’s gift to politics
08/03/2010 – There is no doubt that homosexuality challenges, if you like, orthodox notions of the right order of things
15/03/2010 – I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons
15/03/2010 – Western civilisation came to this country in 1788 and I’m proud of that
07/03/2010 – Homosexuality? How do you feel about that? Abbott:I’d probably feel a bit threatened
15/03/2010 – we can’t stop people from making mistakes that cause them to be less well-off than they might otherwise be
05/04/2010 – Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it’s not necessarily everyone’s place to come to Australia
05/04/2010 – ‘Now, I know that there are some Aboriginal people who aren’t happy with Australia Day. For them it remains Invasion Day. I think a better view is the view of Noel Pearson, who has said that Aboriginal people have much to celebrate in this country’s British Heritage.’
17/05/2010 – I know politicians are gonna be judged on everything they say, but sometimes, in the heat of discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark, which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth is those carefully prepared scripted remarks.
23/06/2010 – Victory is within our ready grasp…We are in reach of a famous victory
30/06/2010 – There may not be a great job for Aboriginal people.. if it’s picking up rubbish… it just has to be done
19/07/2010 – WorkChoices is dead, it’s buried, it’s cremated
26/07/2010 – I think I certainly get women, but, obviously, I’ve got some marketing to do
01/08/2010 – On paid parental leave, over your dead body? Abbott:I did change my mind on this issue (see: 22/07/2002)
03/08/2010 – Are you suggesting to me that when it comes from Julia, ‘No’ doesn’t mean ‘No’
10/08/2010 – I’ve always been very wary of debates involving women
28/09/2010 – I congratulate the member for Fisher, who has been a friend of mine for a very long time (as deputy Speaker)
20/12/2010 – Do we really want to invest $50B (NBN)…. in what is essentially a video entertainment system?
08/02/2011 – Mr Abbott saying “sometimes shit happens” after being told of the circumstances of Lance Corporal Jared MacKinney’s death when he was in Afghanistan last year.
24/02/2011 – If the Prime Minister wants to, politically speaking, make an honest woman of herself
27/04/2011 – Whyalla will be wiped off the map by Julia Gillard’s carbon tax.
28/05/2011 – I last described myself as the political lovechild of John Howard and Bronwyn Bishop
09/01/2012 – Well, that was one boat (Costa Concordia) that did get stopped, wasn’t it?
17/03/2012 – On behalf of the Coalition, I offer my deep condolences to Gough Whitlam on the passing of Margaret… There was a lot wrong with the Whitlam government, but nevertheless it was a very significant episode in our history.
22/03/2012 – Walking around with targets on their (PM & Albo) foreheads
22/03/2012 – Their baseball bats aren’t there for Anna Bligh, they’re there for this Prime Minister
27/04/2012 – We take as dim a view of Indonesian boats disgorging illegal arrivals in Aust as they take of Aust importing drugs into Bali.
18/05/2012 – The carbon tax is socialism masquerading as environmentalism
29/05/2012 – Gillard won’t lie down and die, and where there’s life, there’s fight.
09/07/2012 – I don’t think it’s a very Christian thing to come in by the back door rather than the front door
15/09/2012 – I have no recollection of it – because it didn’t happen (On Barbara Ramjan incident)
24/09/2012 – PM should not be “swanning” around in New York “talking to Africans”, rather she should be in Jakarta talking to SBY
09/10/2012 – Another day of shame for a government which should already have died of shame
23/10/2012 – Lack of experience within the Government of raising children
10/11/2012 – Ken Wyatt: an urban Aboriginal, he’s not a man of culture
21/11/2012 – The people who have come illegally to this country need to know that they are breaking our laws
22/11/2012 – You will never find from me any attempt to invoke the gender war against my political opponents
22/11/2012 – Now, one thing I will never do.. is deliberately set out to divide Australian against Australian
24/11/2012 – Gillard will be grilled
26/01/2013 – The first lot of Australians were chosen by the finest judges in England
10/03/2013 – Yes I can. Faith is important to me… but it must never, never shape my politics.
28/03/2013 – Five wasted years; after five years when our country has stood still