Poor people dont drive cars.

People have the right to be bigots. Im a fixer.

Team Australia. Shirtfronting. Choppergate.
Stop the boats. Coal is good for humanity.
No cuts to health or the ABC. Sir Prince Philip.
Flags. Its all the fault of a febrile media.
In August 2013, Australia welcomed Tony Abbott as its new
prime minister. This promised to be a marriage between
responsible government and a nation tired of the endless
drama of the GillardRudd years. But thenwell
Fairfax columnist Andrew P Street details the litany of gaffes,
goofs and questionable captains calls that characterised the
subsequent reign of the Abbott government, following the
trail from bold promises to questionable realities, unlikely
recoveries to inexplicable own goals, and Malcolm Turnbulls
assurances of support to the day he pushed the Captain off his
bike once and for all. And all this comes with a colourful
cast of supporting characters and dangerous loons that only a
nation unfamiliar with the concept of below-the-line voting
could elect. Here is a unique take on a politics Australian style.
If Game of Thrones was a deeply irreverent book about politics,
then the TV series would probably not rate nearly as well.
It would, however, look something like this.

Cover design: Robert Polmear

POLITICS

ANdrEw p STreEt

Capain Abbott_Text.indd 3

25/09/2015 2:51 pm

First published in 2015

Copyright Andrew P Street 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968
(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever
is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational
purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has
given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: info@allenandunwin.com
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available
from the National Library of Australia
www.trove.nla.gov.au
ISBN 978 1 76029 054 2
Set in 12/17 pt Adobe Caslon by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

C009448

Capain Abbott_Text.indd 4

The paper in this book is FSC certified.

FSC promotes environmentally responsible,
socially beneficial and economically viable
management of the worlds forests.

25/09/2015 2:51 pm

CONTENTS
Australia, Stop Hitting Yourself
The Gathering Storm
Meet the Motley Crew
Mandate, Mandate, Mandate!
The Right to Be a Bigot
For Those Whove Come Across the Seas . . .
Classified On-Water Matters
Putting the Coal into Coalition
No Cuts to Health
Not Your Average Jo(k)e
Meet the New Senate!
Someones Getting a Shirtfrontin
We All Live in a Competitively Evaluated
Submarine
The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad
Spill Motion
Good Government Starts Today
Im a Fixer

Introduction
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15

Capain Abbott_Text.indd 5

1
9
29
43
53
69
79
91
107
121
137
151
163
177
187
207

25/09/2015 2:51 pm

16 Whos Afraid of Human Rights?

The Hunt for Team Australia

18 Everywhere with Helicopter
19 Whither Labor?
20 Abandon Ship!
17

Epilogue Is This the Best We Can Do?

Acknowledgement Or Whos to Blame for this Book

Capain Abbott_Text.indd 6

223
237
247
257
267
281
291

25/09/2015 2:51 pm

INTRODUCTION
AUSTRALIA, STOP
HITTING YOURSELF
In which your humble narrator explains why he stowed
away aboard this scurvy vessel in the first place.

Democracy is a term whose origins lie in two shorter words:

the Greek demos, meaning citizen of the state, and the Old
Norse word acraser, meaning full of cracks. This is why its
universally understood as meaning rule by horribly broken
people.
In that spirit, friends, welcome to a snarky treatise on Australian politics and the short, strange, and embarrassing rule
of one Anthony John Abbott, the nations twenty-eighth, and
arguably most foolish, prime minister.
Theres no way to sugar-coat it: the politics consumers of
Australia have been through some infuriatingly silly times
since 2013, and this book is an attempt to contextualise said
times in the hope that future generations will learn not to let
them happen again. Its possibly a vain hope, of course, since
1

Capain Abbott_Text.indd 1

25/09/2015 2:51 pm

ANDREW P STREET

Australias not great with historynot least because so much

of it is based on invasion, murder and bad decisions leading
to often-bloody consequences.
Indeed, for a country whose national humour is deeply,
fiercely sarcastic, Australias surprisingly bad with irony.
Perhaps its because everything about the place reeks of
the stuff.
Our national hero is an anti-authoritarian Irish bushranger who defied a corrupt regime of powerful commercial
interests and an easily bought justice system to fight against
the destructive influences of poverty and discrimination.
Our nation-defining military operation was a doomed and
bungled beach assault followed by slinking away under cover
of darkness, on the orders of an imperial regime that regarded
Australians as completely expendable.
And at every sporting event our leaden national anthem is
blasted out to the world even as our immigration policies put
the lie to the noble declaration trumpeted in the notorious
second verse: For those whove come across the seas / Weve
boundless plains to share. These are the boundless plains that
were, as everyone around the world is acutely aware, stolen
by a bunch of criminals and foreign interlopers lobbing in
on boats. In 2015 such landings were illegal and immoral;
in 1788 they represented the proud birth of our plucky
nation. Even the overused phrase the lucky country, which
has functioned as Australias unofficial motto since Donald
Hornes book of the same name was published in 1964, means
the exact opposite of what it appears to convey. Unlike the

Capain Abbott_Text.indd 2

25/09/2015 2:51 pm

AUSTRALIA, STOP HITTING YOURSELF

unambiguously bang-on title of the book youre holding now,1

Hornes was intended as a wry commentary on the nation,
not a celebration of our indisputable good fortunea fact he
made clear at the beginning of the final chapter:
Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who
share its luck. It lives on other peoples ideas, and, although its
ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so
lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are
often taken by surprise.

And in that spirit, perhaps the Abbott government was the

greatest possible manifestation of Hornes prescient vision.

Its a truism that Australian federal elections are never won,

only lost; but never in Australias history has a government
been elected on so strong a platform of not being the previous
one. What makes this epoch extraordinary, then, is the haste
with which the marriage of the Abbott government and the
Australian people soured. And the responsibility for that fell
at the feet of one man.
While governments have always been at the beck and call
of the powerfulafter all, thats basically what powerful
meansit was almost refreshing to see a government willing
to perform with such brazen disregard for the common good.
More specifically, never before has a leader so clearly outlined
his priorities by demonstrating how little the common good
came into the equation.
1 Lets be honest, you knew exactly what this book was about the second you
picked it up. Thanks for doing so, by the way. Very good of you, and dont think its
not appreciated.

Capain Abbott_Text.indd 3

25/09/2015 2:51 pm

ANDREW P STREET

This book tells the tale of a government that came into

office to begin what was predicted to be the beginning of a
conservative epoch, not least because the Opposition was so
divided and scattered, and yet proceeded to collapse under the
weight of the exact same internecine squabbling and political opportunism that destroyed its opponents. Furthermore,
it will depict the way that the Abbott government used a
combination of zealotry, single-mindedness and sheer gall to
transform near-universal national goodwill into widespread
condemnation. In fact, this might yet be the story of how
Australian politics has come to be changed forever.
Theres an upside, though: perhaps it took the predations of
the Abbott government to teach Australia to give a shit about
politics again.

Tony couldnt have done it alone, mind. He was aided and

supported by his treasurer, the often-struggling Joe Hockey,
and a front bench principally made up of ineffectual and superannuated MPs and senators chosen for loyalty rather than
competence, and a back office with little interest in hearing
dissenting opinion (or, for that matter, opinions at all), controlled
by Abbotts chief of staff, the formidable Peta Credlin.
Looking into what at the time seemed a deeply optimistic
crystal ball, I wrote a piece entitled Why an Abbott Victory
Would Be Good2 for the website TheVine, published a few
days before the federal election in September 2013. In that
piece I made a few predictions regarding how things would
2 http://www.thevine.com.au/life/news/why-an-abbott-election-victory-wouldbe-good-20130905-264996/

Capain Abbott_Text.indd 4

25/09/2015 2:51 pm

AUSTRALIA, STOP HITTING YOURSELF

shake out in the all-but-mathematically-certain event of the

Coalition taking power:
We already know [Abbott] cant open his mouth without saying
the exact wrong thing. We already know that hes terrible on policy,
cant think on his feet and dodges responsibility. At the moment he
can largely get away with blaming the government; once hes Prime
Minister, thats not an option anymore. He will look like what he
is: a man of narrow views and narrower knowledge woefully out of
his depth.
And look at the Abbott front bench: its a vipers nest. Theyre
not supporting Abbott because they think hes an inspiring leader,
since hes demonstrated comprehensively that hes not: theyve
backed him because the greatest strength they have had against
Labor over the last 18 months has been in presenting a united front.
Once theyre in power this bunch of smart, ambitious and shrewd
politicians are going to be a lot less forgiving of a leader whos an
obvious and embarrassing liability. Hockey isnt going to fade back
into the benches. Neither is [Malcolm] Turnbull. Neither is [ Julie]
Bishop. Neither is [Scott] Morrison. Those squabbles have been
sublimated for the time being because they had a common enemy:
Labor. Once in power, theyll have a different common enemy:
each other.

At the time I wondered if I was simply whistling as I passed

the graveyard of progressive Australian politics.
After all, the centre-left Labor Party was in complete
disarray. In the event that the recently reinstated PM Kevin
Rudd somehow managed to scrape home in that election, there
was still no serious hope he would have a genuine majority
and similarly little possibility that his government would do
anything more than pander to the middle ground. Rudd was
no negotiator, unlike his immediate predecessor and rival Julia

Capain Abbott_Text.indd 5

25/09/2015 2:51 pm

ANDREW P STREET

Gillard, and in any case the party was still riven by the leadership coup that had just reinstated him as leader.
Abbott, meanwhile, was declaring that the grown-ups
would be back in charge. By promising near-identical policies
to Labor on education, health, the National Broadband
Network and the National Disability Insurance Scheme,
and assuring electors they would keep a steady hand on the
economic tiller, the LiberalNational Coalition neatly delineated the choice between the parties: Labor offered crisis; the
Coalition offered unity.
However, barely had the new House of Representatives
formed than the government unmasked its neo-conservative
reformist agenda, one wildly different to the steady-as-shegoes government promised during the campaign. In its battle
with Labor, the Coalition under Tony Abbott had pursued
victory with the same tenacity and zeal as a dog pursuing
a carand, similarly, had seemingly not completely thought
through the consequences of victory.

Australia has suffered under unpopular leaders before, of

course. According to their detractors, Rudd was an arrogant
bully, Gillard a disloyal Judas, John Howard a fuddy-duddy,
Paul Keating a brawler, Bob Hawke a boozed-up union stooge,
Malcolm Fraser a manipulative snake and Gough Whitlam an
irresponsible idealist. However, one has to go all the way back
to Billy McMahon to find a prime minister who was so widely
considered by the electorate to be an actual fool. That is until . . .
The story upon which youre about to embark is one of a
government of blinkered visionaries, superannuated also-rans
and hard-nosed opportunists; of a gun-shy Opposition, unwilling

Capain Abbott_Text.indd 6

25/09/2015 2:51 pm

AUSTRALIA, STOP HITTING YOURSELF

or unable to do more than run out the clock as the government scored own-goals; of a ragtag bunch of ideologues and
neophytes in the Senate who somehow became the conscience
of a nation, and for which they had to be punished. It is how
political reality came to the major political parties and, for the
most part, gave their legislative gonads a good, solid kicking.
Its the story of a government that turned Australia from
a pioneer in renewable energy and climate change policy to
an international laughing-stock, even being rightfully criticised
by such high-volume polluters as China and the US. Its the
story of how a government destroyed Australias reputation as
a nation of laconic, friendly shell-be-right larrikins and transformed us into small-minded, human rights-averse xenophobes.
Its also the story of a government that was determined
to apply to our enviable systems of socialised healthcare and
education the same free-market policies as the United States, at
exactly the same time as the US was socialising its health and
education infrastructure in a desperate attempt to rectify the
expensive, debt-heavy failures of their bloated, unsustainable,
for-profit systems.
Not a bad effort for less than two years.
Its also a record of a period that I sincerely believeor,
at the very least, anxiously hopewill be looked back on as
a tipping point for the workings of democracy in this wide,
brown, sea-girt land.
For if theres one thing that the Abbott government did do,
it was to teach the world something extraordinary about our
lucky country: that we can never have things so good that we
dont still inexplicably choose to fuck it all up.

Capain Abbott_Text.indd 7

25/09/2015 2:51 pm