Just before Crikey went to press, outgoing prime minister Tony Abbott finally fronted Australian voters about last night’s Liberal leadership coup.
Abbott’s speech was a long time coming, but gracious. “My pledge is to make this change as easy as I can,” he said. “There will be no wrecking, no undermining and no sniping”. But he did take a swipe at “sour” commentary and polls, and slammed a “febrile” media environment that “rewards treachery”.
In fact, Abbott only has himself to blame for today. As Bernard Keane writes, Abbott had everything a PM could hope for when he took government just over two years ago: a fractured and in-fighting opposition, the support of our most powerful news organisation, and a convincing election win.
He squandered it with his relentless negativity, his insistence on waging a nasty and mostly obscure culture war at the behest of the minority far right, and his lack of a coherent vision.
We welcome last night’s election of Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal leader and Prime Minister. Not because we endorse all of his policy positions — we certainly don’t — but because we believe he has the capacity to legislate and govern, and that Abbott had lost it.
Yesterday afternoon when he announced he would challenge, Turnbull pledged to “respect the intelligence of the Australian people”.
“We need … a style of leadership that respects the people’s intelligence, that explains these complex issues, and then sets out the course of action we believe we should take, and makes a case for it. We need advocacy, not slogans.”
Advocacy, not slogans? Now that’s a three-word slogan we can get behind. We look forward to participating in some real, intelligent, forward-looking debates about the future of this country under the Turnbull government.
[Abbott’s speech was a long time coming, but gracious.]
We appear to have a different definition of gracious.
Gracious would have involved at least congratulating Malcolm Turnbull for his victory.
Turnbull needed to win by acclaim … not five votes..in all probability he doesn’t even have the numbers in the joint party room..his early pledge whilst removing the baton from the back of the ute of the same old policies with a Malcolmnian flourish was hardly inspiring..
Ohhhh! Captain Australia is no more. I’m not sure if words are able to describe how devastated I feel!? Perhaps the below song perhaps captures the depths to which I have sunk?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7hPvXMSsMA
The tin ear of Boil Shlernt in evidence again, “One down, one to go!” – true right mate, and the sooner you go the better for this country.
AR – get off Shorten’s back – he is NOT the government. Why don’t you save your inane comments for 6 months time when nothing has changed under Turdbull? And unless the voting public are complete idiots, the polls will return to where they are now.
The Turd has already said he will keep the government policies on same sex marriage – a divisive plebiscite – and on climate change – the useless (in)Direct Action. According to news reports, the Turd also said there needs to be tax cuts to the top end of town “to get the economy going”!! What else is new?
All that happened yesterday was that a large bucket of air freshener was tipped over the rotten carcase of the LNP government, and as we all know that will NOT remove the stench for very long!
Then there are the 45 current Liberal pollies who voted against him, plus the Nats. The Turd doesn’t even have a majority in the joint party room. Policy changes anyone??? He won’t have a hope!!!