Modern Australian Politics 101

Bonkers

Another insightful article from Lenore Taylor in today's Guardian Australia online.  And yet more below the line commentary in response from yours truly, here:

I am not now, never have been nor ever could have become a supporter of Tony Abbott. Just need to make that clear cos it's reasonable to acknowledge the point of origin of one's critique. 

But truly ... 

One is left almost speechless by the self-serving, delusional hypocrisy and cant of the man. It beggars belief that he could be so out of touch with the real world, so stunningly incapable of even the mildest form of self-critical examination. And yet one wonders if he has inhabited a Tony Abbott bubble of sycophancy for so long, speaking only to trusted like-minded others who only knew how to or had the courage to say "yes Tony, whatever you think", that he may actually have persuaded himself he speaks truth?

• The leadership ballot was brought on because it was about to be revealed he was - in fact - a winner? Eh? 

• Everyone else is disloyal, careerist and backstabbing? But even he does not refute Scott Morrison's revelation that TA offered to dump Hockey to protect his Prime Ministerial skin. 

• And nothing has changed? How supremely ironic that Mr Abbott and the ALP front bench are now the only sentient beings on Earth who cling to the delusional hope that what the Tories did was simply change the sales team.

Mr Abbott can be allowed to believe or promulgate that last idea because

1. he lost and is clearly hurting, 
2. he is as bonkers as is the idea that nothing has changed and
3. his shock jock friends need some one who is no less disconnected from reality to interview for a while as they try to savage the new Prime Minister. But even the shock jocks will get bored with Tony Abbott's broken record because they were only interested in cosying up to power and poor old Tony now has none.

But the ALP needs to shake off its fondness for / reliance on their last hope - like TA - that nothing has changed. The whole game as changed. The future looks entirely different - which isn't to say that some policies won't be carried forward because they clearly will be. Others, however, will alter and the context, strategy and discourse around the central conservative agenda for Australia will be conducted in wholly different terms. Tony Abbott is irrelevant to a conversation about what the future may look like because he always has been irrelevant to any discourse about the shape of modernity. He only ever wanted to look back and return to the mythical past. That and his demonstrable incompetence are the reasons he was dumped.

Now, however, the ALP has a duty to engage with the legitimate, necessary debate about what a modern, social democratic Australia could look like and offer it to voters as a credible alternative vision to 21st Century conservatism. The longer the ALP stays in the same conversation and mind set as TA the farther behind they will fall and the more difficult it will become to persuade Australians that the modern Left has anything real and appealing to offer.