Tony Abbott has confirmed that he will be contesting the seat of Warringah in the next election, and, if he wins, “continue to serve as a member of parliament”.
Bill Shorten must be so relieved.
Now he can be assured he won’t be up against a united cohesive coalition, focussed on moving the government back to the political centre where most Australian voters want it to be.
Eric Abtez has already leapt out in front of the media to express his support for Abbott’s continued presence in parliament, and claimed it was not an indication of ongoing instability in the party
“Tony Abbott is absolutely no Kevin Rudd and therefore, I believe those sorts of analogies are not appropriate in any way, shape or form.
Kevin Rudd was always about one thing only: Kevin Rudd. Whereas Tony Abbott has always been about one thing, namely the Australian people.”
He’s right about one thing, Abbott is certainly no Rudd, who was, for a time one of Australia’s most popular Prime Ministers. Abbott, on the other hand, was one of our least popular.
Abetz is also not totally off base with the claim that Rudd was all about Rudd, his relentless campaign to retake the leadership smacked more of a quest for vengeance than a genuine belief that his abilities as PM would benefit the nation. Losing the 2013 election didn’t seem to bother him nearly as much as losing the leadership in 2010.
There’s also the issue of the options available to both failed PMs after politics. Rudd appears to have at least an outside chance of becoming the next secretary-general of the UN, where, no doubt, he would have a splendid time being noticed by everyone as he presides over dispatching sternly worded letters to the architects of atrocity.
It’s difficult to imagine Tony Abbott as an international diplomat without suffering a bogglement injury to the brain.
Another option might be for Abbott to follow in Latham’s footsteps, and become outrage-bait on the media clicks circuit. It certainly seems likely that he considered it as an option, his articles in The Spectator and The Australian proved there is a market for deeply unpopular ex-Prime Ministers to stir up racial tensions and dangerously inflame the immigration debate.
Perhaps Abbott decided that a leading role in public debate, on issues about which he claims to have very strong feelings, is not for him. Perhaps he really wants to spend a few more years sitting quietly on the backbench, loyally serving the good citizens of Warringah, and supporting the Turnbull government in it’s attempt to bring back small “l” liberal policies and reasoned public debate. (Did anyone read that sentence and not think HAHAHAno?)
Or perhaps he really does believe he has a chance at Rudding Malcom Turnbull out of the leadership and dragging Australia back into the slogan-soaked chesty machoism of 2014.
Whatever his motivation, it’s unlikely he is ever going to lose the misty-eyed might-have-been gaze of the government’s hard-right conservatives. His presence, even on the backbench, gives them a focus and unity they’d have trouble maintaining without him. Which undoubtedly is going to make life more difficult for Turnbull, much easier for Shorten and more irritating for the rest of us.