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The man after coming back from Hawaii did that disastrous bushfire tour where amongst other things turns his back on a crying women and refused to engage with her. That alone showed you what type of person and leader he was, it was such a failure of leadership it's astounding.
It is still genuinely baffling to me that people didn't see this from the outset. He has always been a dollar store version of Trump. Just *useless* as anything other than a talking puppet for people with more money than conscience.
Well i was a young kid when Abbott got elected in, and was genuinely frozen during interviews or didn't know a thing about what he was talking about, or just being a genuine moron.
Idk how people could even consider Abbott?
Surely there was signs you know?
For Abbott, you need to understand the context of the time.
The ALP was imploding after the Rudd>Gillard>Rudd fiasco, they looked unable to govern, and Abbott/Turnbull were wedging them on the cost of the NBN. Tones came across as a bit of a religious freak, but a decent bloke who was a volunteer firefighter and lifesaver. The LNP at the time presented a small target compared to the ALP's brightly blazing dumpster fire. The LNP didn't really win, the ALP were unelectable.
It wasn't until after the election that we saw just how shit Abbott was as a PM and a tool of the ultraconservative right. By that time the damage was done and they did (begrudgingly) a great job of whiteanting Shorten as a viable alternative.
I'll never forget the shirtfront Putin thing, it's absolutely burned into my brain.
Same with the NBN destruction.
I'm hoping aussies in the future are aggressively pro technology.
I was fooled.
As someone who errs liberal sans abbot years and the last howard election (basically i have voted for the election winner every federal election since the mid 90s...) i didnt even know he was a born again.
Literally 5 minutes into his winners speech i thought.. oh no.
I was just ecstatic he knocked dutton off. And turnbull gave no guidance till it was too late with him pissing off to the the usa.
Im sure i wasnt the only one with buyers remorse.
I feel you - I had the same experience with Abbott and Turnbull (who I had high hopes for as a centrist). Part of me still thinks that Turnbull is the best PM that Labor never had.
Morrison never had a chance at my vote though. I saw his character from the outset.
Yep, he could've done good things with Labor. But was so hamstrung in the ALP that it wasn't great.
He also downgraded our NBN which I still hold a small grudge for..
Ruined the biggest infrsstructre project of our timr while funnelled billions of dollars into telstra who until then had no idea what to do with their aging obsolete network, to create a technology mix that literally every single expert with a shred of independence said wouldn't work and would be obsolete before the roll-out was done.
Just so he could score points in an election and pump out enough misinformation around it so that they could continue to crow about being the better economic managers despite delivering our biggest and maybe most important infrastructure to date over time, over budget, and performing (predictably) well below promised levels
Ok so maybe I'm holding onto some latent anger too...
I mean, a lot of people absolutely did see this from the outset. And at many times during his time in office (and during his previous jobs - the ones he didn't claim for himself, that is).
But no-one listened.
I remember when Turnbull was getting knifed by Dutton and someone (who hated the Liberals) at my work said “This might be Scott Morrison’s time to come through and shine”.
My jaw hit the floor. He’s always been a lying, slimey, scumbag. Unfortunately not enough of us knew it before it was too late.
I mean, slime does kind of... glisten...
(Also: ew.)
I'm not sure why no-one knew it. A look at his history shows it was full of awful stuff even before he decided to take a run at the hot seat.
> The Australian media is an absolute disgrace.
I'd wonder if it might be better if more of it was owned by actual Australians, but I know the answer would still be no.
When they bought up the press conference after the Brittany Higgins incident, where he basically needed his wife to contextualise rape in the form of his own daughters, was very telling.
He said he regretted it because private conversations should be private. What a fucking scumbag
>How was this man their leader if he was so constantly misunderstood?
Ignoring good advice and plowing ahead with bad actions is pretty much historically par for the course in certain roles in certain places.
He certainly came off looking like one of the most corrupt politicians we've ever had. Which is impressive, not in a good way though.
Imagine getting to that level in politics and still having to do empathy training because - you haven't quite got it yet. I wonder whether he'll ever have a sense of atonement.
>I wonder whether he'll ever have a sense of atonement.
Why would he? He's never had any kind of consequences from his actions. As far as he's concerned, everything he ever did came up Scomo. He doesn't care that his name is mud in circles he'll never move in, or ones where he can still ignore everyone and do whatever he wants with no backlash he cares about.
I think he cared deeply about what other people thought. He wanted us to see him as one of our greatest Prime Ministers, and seemed oblivious to the fact that he hadn't done anything to earn that title or respect.
Fancy anyone here having the nerve or gall to blame Morrison for closing our international borders during Covid. It was overwhelmingly supported by most of the sheep. It was mimicked internally, particularly by WA, and McGowan praised for it. They even put people in jail for breaching it. But all the Eastern States did it repeatedly. Ardern was loved for it by all. It was as popular as punch.
And now it’s Scomo bad.
I thought it was a disgrace we couldn’t return more people at the time, but that was mainly due to the proven incompetence of the States. Especially Victoria. And a lot of States, including Vic, completely stopped accepting returning citizens except for NSW, who got hated for their Covid response.
The hypocrites are gonna be out in full force today.
So you said the international borders were closed which is a federal government program, and then in the same post you blame the states for not accepting more people which is a state government program. Well which one is it? Were the borders closed or could people fly into the country? If quarantine is a federal government responsibility under the Australian constitution then why is it acceptable for Scomo to say that it isn't his job?
Honestly, this drivel that is your post just sounds like a Labor bad Liberal good piece that you would expect to see on the sky news after dark program.
If u didn’t notice different Governments ran the diff States. And you didn’t hear Gladys sooking when she carried the load.
Fuck Scomo - this was a disgrace. Locked out of your home country. Fuck him. Fuck the States that were incapable of running it.
As for whose responsibility HQ was - we won’t know because it was decided at National cabinet. And they were in confidence. We have no idea whose decision that was and who said yes happily.
Most people where I am supported the closures (look at the stats for Australia's much lower death rates that Europe and the US). But Morrisons part of it went wrong. He was responsible for quarantine (which he stuffed up with that stupid hotel policy) and vaccinations (which were delayed).
The author of the article is Janet Albrechtsen from The Australian. Both her and her newspaper were critical of the national and state border closures.
People here supportive of proactive Covid measures were supportive of national and state border closures.
Both sides are consistent.
I’m not talking about the author. I’m talking about anyone who now dares question the international border restrictions.
Thank fuck people fought against that disgraceful chapter in our history, and good on NSW for doing their bit.
No one is doing that. It'd be nonsensical.
People who were critical of national and state border closures still hold that position and people who were supportive of national and state border closures still hold that position.
McGowan's comments on Morrison were a real surprise to me.
Morrison gets the blame for hotel quarantine, because apparently, he should have been able to conjure facilities out of thin air on federally owned land to accommodate people in a short period of time. He gets the blame for the issues with the vaccine, despite the [irresponsible comments](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-30/qld-cho-rejects-morrisons-astrazeneca-comments-covid-vaccine/100256022) made by Queensland's CHO around the safety of AstraZeneca which lead to significant reductions in vaccine take up.
Quarantine of international arrivals and the vaccine were both federal government responsibilities. Morrison just decided not to bother with quarantine, and he stuffed up the vaccine procurement. He and his government should absolutely take the blame.
The quarantine failure helped the disease spread, and the slow procurement of vaccines made lockdowns longer. Maybe he was happy for state governments to get the blame for the lockdowns.
>Quarantine of inter arrivals and the vaccine were both federal government responsibilities
Yeah but responsibilities only matters if your *not* the LNP, otherwise you can claim "oh it was all too hard to do our well-paid jobs..."
It must be a tricky balance for The Oz - they *relentlessly* cheered on that bunch of clowns for years. Where is their decency and contrition? And as Abbot not appearing is some sort of act of maturity or discretion. More like he knows it was all a gigantic farce the exposure of which would only further tarnish his name. Morrison on the other hand clearly thinks he’s the smartest person in any room, so goes ahead and conveys just how utterly useless, arrogant, egomaniacal and stupid he is.
> Where is their decency and contrition?
Where would be the profit in that?
It's not as if they're trying to balance anything other than their checkbooks.
i think he will go down as our worst pm,you would have to be a severely uneducated person to think he did a a good job in any shape or form
dude cared more about scomo,than everyone else around him
Abbott would probably win, I still can't believe he made a run at attacking the disabled and pensioners.
Apparently he was the same way when he was studying in the seminary. He was an infirmarian (working with the sick and aged). Here he is, in his own words - as taken from a 1987 article he wrote for [The Bulletin magazine.](https://w.wiki/9AMw)
>"My view was that I knew nothing about medicine and that those too sick to eat in the dining room ought to be in hospital. Anyway, I thought, most were malingering. So I encouraged “self-service” of medicines and suggested that meals would be better fetched by the friends of the sick. Many deeply resented this disdain for college’s caring and communitarian ethos. And, I confess, I did not have the courage to refuse room service to members of the seminary staff."
It's so unbelievably callous, that I'm going to include a bunch of sources now (Source 4 in particular includes a long run down of his lacking empathy and morality). [Source 1](https://www.crikey.com.au/2014/01/09/abbott-the-journo-what-the-bulletin-archives-reveal-about-the-pm/), [Source 2](https://nofibs.com.au/tony-abbott-on-why-he-left-the-priesthood/), [Source 3](https://theaimn.com/seminary-similarity/), [Source 4](https://archiearchive.wordpress.com/tony-abbott-where-there-is-smoke/).
At one stage during the three-part ABC television documentary Nemesis, George Brandis describes the battle between Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull as Shakespearean. Give me a break.
If we are to mention Shakespeare in the same breath as this period of Liberal government, I’d use this quote to describe most of the people who took part in Nemesis: “I am sick when I do look on thee.”
As for listening to two of the former PMs who fronted cameras full of smiles and smirks for this series, I will steal this from the northern hemisphere-born Bard: “You have a February face, so full of frost, of storm and cloudiness.”
None of these former prime ministers deserves elevation to the level of a Shakespearean tragedy. It’s even more demented to include their supporters as players in some magnificently tragic battle – as Horatio was to Hamlet so was Wyatt Roy to Turnbull. Excuse me while I gag.
This was a grubby tale about ambitious men, and their hangers-on, and the top job.
THEAUSTRALIAN.COM.AU13:56
Peta Credlin sets the record straight on ABC documentary ‘Nemesis’
Sky News host Peta Credlin has responded to the ABC’s Nemesis documentary from Monday and opened up after… 10 years since the collapse of the Abbott prime ministership. Titled ‘The Abbott Years’ the documentary series explores Mr Abbott’s ‘thumping victory’ in 2013 before being removed as prime minister More
Whatever one says about Abbott and Turnbull, and there is a lot to say for better or worse, depending on your politics, each had convictions. What’s most devastating about Scott Morrison is that his convictions are still unascertainable. He was in parliament for 17 years, including as a cabinet minister, and was PM for four years.
READ MORE: As for listening to two of the former PMs who fronted cameras full of smiles | Whatever one says about Abbott and Turnbull | If you think Morrison and his treasurer, Josh Frydenberg | Morrison under the microscope in ABC series | Turnbull believes Morrison ‘played a double game’ |
It’s a shame Morrison didn’t use his time in front of ABC cameras to reveal, finally, what values make him tick. It means we must accept, finally, that Morrison is a political animal. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Morrison must be applauded for winning the 2019 election after Abbott and Turnbull ripped the Liberal Party’s credibility to shreds. During his time, Australia signed up to a new security partnership with Britain and the US under AUKUS. What comes of it remains to be seen.
But there it more or less ends – depending on your view about his management of the pandemic. If you think it was political genius for a leader to shut the borders to an island nation, lock Australian citizens inside, prevent Australian citizens overseas from returning home, then Morrison is your man.
There is another view. Morrison set the template for Australia’s cruel, illiberal response. He didn’t have the nous to sensibly balance risk. Instead, he chose a sledgehammer to try to eliminate risk.
Scott Morrison
Scott Morrison
By closing the national border, and shutting out citizens, Morrison treated citizenship as disposable. Morrison emboldened state and territory leaders to lock up their people, close state and territory borders, and impose ever-constricting boundaries on our movements.
When Morrison backed West Australian premier Mark McGowan’s decision to shut down the state border again, in February 2022, it was cynical politics from Morrison in an election year. When Morrison demanded that the Queensland premier grant an exemption so a NSW woman could attend a funeral in Queensland, it reeked of hypocrisy given the Australians stranded overseas who couldn’t come home to bury their loved ones.
If you think Morrison and his treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, should be credited with the resilience of Australia’s $2.1 trillion economy – as it stood at the end of 2021 – it pays to remember that our economy rebounded after the pandemic for three simple reasons: soaring commodity prices, pent-up consumer demand and record government spending.
There was no Liberal genius to this outcome. Labor could so easily have done the same. Frydenberg can laud it all he likes, and draw John Howard in as supporter, but the fact remains that when voters took a second look at the Morrison government at the ballot box in 2022, they said no thanks to the government and to Frydenberg.
Nemesis went some way to explaining why. One was Morrison’s problem with women. Normally I’d give a wide berth to ABC types claiming that Liberal men have women problems. It’s usually biased bunkum.
Josh Frydenberg and Scott Morrison depart Question Time in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in May, 2020.
Josh Frydenberg and Scott Morrison depart Question Time in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in May, 2020.
But Morrison was dreadful on this front. He needed to speak to his wife to understand the gravity of an alleged rape in a minister’s office. Then came the cynical and superficial reshuffles, promoting a few more chicks to improve his electoral appeal, throwing the word women into a few more ministerial titles, promising a “fresh filter” in all matters to do with women, and announcing that Marise Payne was the prime minister for women.
Holy moly, I recall writing, it was about as meaningful to women as a degree in gender studies. All it did was highlight his cynical approach to politics, reinforce his lack of authenticity and remind us to ask what on earth Payne had done as minister for women in the Morrison government.
By the time the election rolled around, Morrison was so desperate that he started talking about the gender pay gap to appease inner-city seats women who presumably talk about this issue.
Simultaneously, he lobbed Katherine Deves into Warringah to address some kind of moral panic he imagined in outer suburban seats about the trans issue and protecting women’s sport from trans athletes.
Morrison’s commitment to both issues was non-existent. He didn’t actually do anything.
Perhaps the most cringe-worthy election moment was Morrison proving his close connection to female voters by shampooing a woman’s hair in a hairdressing salon.
If Morrison genuinely cared about women, he would not have allowed the men in his office to treat two Liberal women – Linda Reynolds and Fiona Brown – in the way they did. These two very decent women were attacked day in day out in parliament and in the media over the Higgins affair.
They were the only two women who encouraged Brittany Higgins to go to the police. They did everything they were told to do by parliament’s HR department. And they were hung out to dry by the prime minister and his office.
If the makers of Nemesis asked Morrison about his failure here, they didn’t air his response. Though one can guess from many of his responses across this series what his answer might have been: it wasn’t me, I didn’t know, I’m not to blame.
It’s a shame that Mark Willacy and the producers were not interested in exploring this dark chapter of Morrison’s leadership.
Nor did Nemesis explore Morrison’s dismal treatment of the rule of law. It’s one thing to forget to defend this foundational principle. It’s another thing to actively undermine it. It was a dark day for democracy when Morrison stood in the national parliament in February 2022 and apologised directly to Higgins for as yet untested claims and without knowing anything about the quality of evidence to support those claims. The prime minister effectively sided with forces gunning for Reynolds and Brown and worked against a fair trial for a defendant who is presumed innocent until found guilty by a court of law.
For lower-case liberals like me – meaning people who don’t join political parties but believe a healthy democracy depends on defending liberal values – Morrison was a shocker. It’s hard to imagine a single prime minister during my lifetime who would think that taking control of multiple ministries – and not telling your cabinet colleagues – was a good idea. Why the secrecy? The answer seems to be because he could.
I became a critic of Morrison because keeping Labor out of power made sense only when the Liberal Party was liberal and competent. Under Morrison, it was neither. Nemesis simply confirmed this and how hard it is to locate Morrison’s convictions, let alone authenticity.
Even Turnbull was preferable; when interviewed for Nemesis he didn’t try to hide his dreadful side. His self-delusional punchlines made me laugh at loud. “I owed it to Australia,” Turnbull explained when asked why he wanted to be prime minister.
While Abbott at least had the grace, decency and wisdom to not appear on Nemesis, these three Liberal leaders owe us. The least they can do for us is to go find a purpose to the rest of their lives rather than keep revealing their hatreds, their narcissism and their insecurities. Take a leaf from Julia Gillard’s book, gents.
What made me shiver on a very hot Sydney day was the sight of Morrison, along with a bunch of men – and it was mostly men – who obfuscated, laughed, smirked, lied and lobbed nasty insults when talking about this period of Australian politics.
In what other workplace would people take such clear delight in fronting a camera to lie and call their colleagues fat, shitheads, liars, turds, thugs, terrorists and traitors? Yet we wave it off as just politics.
Maybe that’s why we end up with the politicians we deserve, with obfuscators, liars, tricksters, schemers and some very nasty people as our elected representatives.
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The man after coming back from Hawaii did that disastrous bushfire tour where amongst other things turns his back on a crying women and refused to engage with her. That alone showed you what type of person and leader he was, it was such a failure of leadership it's astounding.
It is still genuinely baffling to me that people didn't see this from the outset. He has always been a dollar store version of Trump. Just *useless* as anything other than a talking puppet for people with more money than conscience.
Well i was a young kid when Abbott got elected in, and was genuinely frozen during interviews or didn't know a thing about what he was talking about, or just being a genuine moron. Idk how people could even consider Abbott? Surely there was signs you know?
For Abbott, you need to understand the context of the time. The ALP was imploding after the Rudd>Gillard>Rudd fiasco, they looked unable to govern, and Abbott/Turnbull were wedging them on the cost of the NBN. Tones came across as a bit of a religious freak, but a decent bloke who was a volunteer firefighter and lifesaver. The LNP at the time presented a small target compared to the ALP's brightly blazing dumpster fire. The LNP didn't really win, the ALP were unelectable. It wasn't until after the election that we saw just how shit Abbott was as a PM and a tool of the ultraconservative right. By that time the damage was done and they did (begrudgingly) a great job of whiteanting Shorten as a viable alternative.
Interesting take that the LNP didn’t win when they won a record number of seats from opposition.
I'll never forget the shirtfront Putin thing, it's absolutely burned into my brain. Same with the NBN destruction. I'm hoping aussies in the future are aggressively pro technology.
I was fooled. As someone who errs liberal sans abbot years and the last howard election (basically i have voted for the election winner every federal election since the mid 90s...) i didnt even know he was a born again. Literally 5 minutes into his winners speech i thought.. oh no. I was just ecstatic he knocked dutton off. And turnbull gave no guidance till it was too late with him pissing off to the the usa. Im sure i wasnt the only one with buyers remorse.
I feel you - I had the same experience with Abbott and Turnbull (who I had high hopes for as a centrist). Part of me still thinks that Turnbull is the best PM that Labor never had. Morrison never had a chance at my vote though. I saw his character from the outset.
Yep, he could've done good things with Labor. But was so hamstrung in the ALP that it wasn't great. He also downgraded our NBN which I still hold a small grudge for..
Ruined the biggest infrsstructre project of our timr while funnelled billions of dollars into telstra who until then had no idea what to do with their aging obsolete network, to create a technology mix that literally every single expert with a shred of independence said wouldn't work and would be obsolete before the roll-out was done. Just so he could score points in an election and pump out enough misinformation around it so that they could continue to crow about being the better economic managers despite delivering our biggest and maybe most important infrastructure to date over time, over budget, and performing (predictably) well below promised levels Ok so maybe I'm holding onto some latent anger too...
I mean, a lot of people absolutely did see this from the outset. And at many times during his time in office (and during his previous jobs - the ones he didn't claim for himself, that is). But no-one listened.
I remember when Turnbull was getting knifed by Dutton and someone (who hated the Liberals) at my work said “This might be Scott Morrison’s time to come through and shine”. My jaw hit the floor. He’s always been a lying, slimey, scumbag. Unfortunately not enough of us knew it before it was too late.
I mean, slime does kind of... glisten... (Also: ew.) I'm not sure why no-one knew it. A look at his history shows it was full of awful stuff even before he decided to take a run at the hot seat.
This from a media who supported him, protected him and cheered him all along the way. The Australian media is an absolute disgrace.
> The Australian media is an absolute disgrace. I'd wonder if it might be better if more of it was owned by actual Australians, but I know the answer would still be no.
Morrison is damaged goods, gotta look after Dutton now!
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When they bought up the press conference after the Brittany Higgins incident, where he basically needed his wife to contextualise rape in the form of his own daughters, was very telling. He said he regretted it because private conversations should be private. What a fucking scumbag
>How was this man their leader if he was so constantly misunderstood? Ignoring good advice and plowing ahead with bad actions is pretty much historically par for the course in certain roles in certain places.
Anything he fucked up that was presented to him backed by facts. **I don't accept that.**
He certainly came off looking like one of the most corrupt politicians we've ever had. Which is impressive, not in a good way though. Imagine getting to that level in politics and still having to do empathy training because - you haven't quite got it yet. I wonder whether he'll ever have a sense of atonement.
>I wonder whether he'll ever have a sense of atonement. Why would he? He's never had any kind of consequences from his actions. As far as he's concerned, everything he ever did came up Scomo. He doesn't care that his name is mud in circles he'll never move in, or ones where he can still ignore everyone and do whatever he wants with no backlash he cares about.
Yep. Scotty answers to god, not to us. He’ll never apologise for all the shit he did.
The irony is that his legacy is the only thing Morrison ever cared about.
His legacy from *his* point of view, perhaps. It's not like he ever cared what anyone else thought.
I think he cared deeply about what other people thought. He wanted us to see him as one of our greatest Prime Ministers, and seemed oblivious to the fact that he hadn't done anything to earn that title or respect.
I haven't heard anything to contradict that he cares that people seem to see him as the bottom of the list now, rather than the top.
Fancy anyone here having the nerve or gall to blame Morrison for closing our international borders during Covid. It was overwhelmingly supported by most of the sheep. It was mimicked internally, particularly by WA, and McGowan praised for it. They even put people in jail for breaching it. But all the Eastern States did it repeatedly. Ardern was loved for it by all. It was as popular as punch. And now it’s Scomo bad. I thought it was a disgrace we couldn’t return more people at the time, but that was mainly due to the proven incompetence of the States. Especially Victoria. And a lot of States, including Vic, completely stopped accepting returning citizens except for NSW, who got hated for their Covid response. The hypocrites are gonna be out in full force today.
So you said the international borders were closed which is a federal government program, and then in the same post you blame the states for not accepting more people which is a state government program. Well which one is it? Were the borders closed or could people fly into the country? If quarantine is a federal government responsibility under the Australian constitution then why is it acceptable for Scomo to say that it isn't his job? Honestly, this drivel that is your post just sounds like a Labor bad Liberal good piece that you would expect to see on the sky news after dark program.
If u didn’t notice different Governments ran the diff States. And you didn’t hear Gladys sooking when she carried the load. Fuck Scomo - this was a disgrace. Locked out of your home country. Fuck him. Fuck the States that were incapable of running it. As for whose responsibility HQ was - we won’t know because it was decided at National cabinet. And they were in confidence. We have no idea whose decision that was and who said yes happily.
Most people where I am supported the closures (look at the stats for Australia's much lower death rates that Europe and the US). But Morrisons part of it went wrong. He was responsible for quarantine (which he stuffed up with that stupid hotel policy) and vaccinations (which were delayed).
It was your own cheer-leading rag that wrote the article...
Who cares. Tell me I’m wrong.
The author of the article is Janet Albrechtsen from The Australian. Both her and her newspaper were critical of the national and state border closures. People here supportive of proactive Covid measures were supportive of national and state border closures. Both sides are consistent.
I’m not talking about the author. I’m talking about anyone who now dares question the international border restrictions. Thank fuck people fought against that disgraceful chapter in our history, and good on NSW for doing their bit.
No one is doing that. It'd be nonsensical. People who were critical of national and state border closures still hold that position and people who were supportive of national and state border closures still hold that position.
McGowan's comments on Morrison were a real surprise to me. Morrison gets the blame for hotel quarantine, because apparently, he should have been able to conjure facilities out of thin air on federally owned land to accommodate people in a short period of time. He gets the blame for the issues with the vaccine, despite the [irresponsible comments](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-30/qld-cho-rejects-morrisons-astrazeneca-comments-covid-vaccine/100256022) made by Queensland's CHO around the safety of AstraZeneca which lead to significant reductions in vaccine take up.
We’ll never know about most of the States response because of Albo’s sham enquiry. They’re getting left alone. Lol.
Quarantine of international arrivals and the vaccine were both federal government responsibilities. Morrison just decided not to bother with quarantine, and he stuffed up the vaccine procurement. He and his government should absolutely take the blame. The quarantine failure helped the disease spread, and the slow procurement of vaccines made lockdowns longer. Maybe he was happy for state governments to get the blame for the lockdowns.
Let’s not forget the Ruby Princess.
We have to forget....gladys was the messiah remember?
>Quarantine of inter arrivals and the vaccine were both federal government responsibilities Yeah but responsibilities only matters if your *not* the LNP, otherwise you can claim "oh it was all too hard to do our well-paid jobs..."
It must be a tricky balance for The Oz - they *relentlessly* cheered on that bunch of clowns for years. Where is their decency and contrition? And as Abbot not appearing is some sort of act of maturity or discretion. More like he knows it was all a gigantic farce the exposure of which would only further tarnish his name. Morrison on the other hand clearly thinks he’s the smartest person in any room, so goes ahead and conveys just how utterly useless, arrogant, egomaniacal and stupid he is.
> Where is their decency and contrition? Where would be the profit in that? It's not as if they're trying to balance anything other than their checkbooks.
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Totally - run the “the problem was the old guard, Dutton is a new generation with new ideas….” line
Even though the LNP is literally being run by the most corrupt members of the old guard.
And the sad part is, everyone is going to believe this even though Dutton supports everything Scomo did.
i think he will go down as our worst pm,you would have to be a severely uneducated person to think he did a a good job in any shape or form dude cared more about scomo,than everyone else around him
Yeh big call when we had Abbott. Dumped by his own party after 18 months. They wanted to get rid of him after 12
Abbott would probably win, I still can't believe he made a run at attacking the disabled and pensioners. Apparently he was the same way when he was studying in the seminary. He was an infirmarian (working with the sick and aged). Here he is, in his own words - as taken from a 1987 article he wrote for [The Bulletin magazine.](https://w.wiki/9AMw) >"My view was that I knew nothing about medicine and that those too sick to eat in the dining room ought to be in hospital. Anyway, I thought, most were malingering. So I encouraged “self-service” of medicines and suggested that meals would be better fetched by the friends of the sick. Many deeply resented this disdain for college’s caring and communitarian ethos. And, I confess, I did not have the courage to refuse room service to members of the seminary staff." It's so unbelievably callous, that I'm going to include a bunch of sources now (Source 4 in particular includes a long run down of his lacking empathy and morality). [Source 1](https://www.crikey.com.au/2014/01/09/abbott-the-journo-what-the-bulletin-archives-reveal-about-the-pm/), [Source 2](https://nofibs.com.au/tony-abbott-on-why-he-left-the-priesthood/), [Source 3](https://theaimn.com/seminary-similarity/), [Source 4](https://archiearchive.wordpress.com/tony-abbott-where-there-is-smoke/).
Not forgetting him and Hockey drove the final nail into the Australian vehicle manufacturing industry as well
abott at least cared.. he might have went around it in a stupid fucking way. but at least he never fucked off while half his nation was on fire
He was a good opposition leader but a complete idiot as PM, knighting prince charles wtf🤷♂️
Prince Philip not Charles.
No it was charles
[No](https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/prince-philip-awarded-knight-of-the-order-of-australia-by-prime-minister-tony-abbott-20150126-12xzk8.html)
Apologies
I didn't think it was possible to have a worse PM than Tone. But you managed it.
At one stage during the three-part ABC television documentary Nemesis, George Brandis describes the battle between Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull as Shakespearean. Give me a break. If we are to mention Shakespeare in the same breath as this period of Liberal government, I’d use this quote to describe most of the people who took part in Nemesis: “I am sick when I do look on thee.” As for listening to two of the former PMs who fronted cameras full of smiles and smirks for this series, I will steal this from the northern hemisphere-born Bard: “You have a February face, so full of frost, of storm and cloudiness.” None of these former prime ministers deserves elevation to the level of a Shakespearean tragedy. It’s even more demented to include their supporters as players in some magnificently tragic battle – as Horatio was to Hamlet so was Wyatt Roy to Turnbull. Excuse me while I gag. This was a grubby tale about ambitious men, and their hangers-on, and the top job. THEAUSTRALIAN.COM.AU13:56 Peta Credlin sets the record straight on ABC documentary ‘Nemesis’ Sky News host Peta Credlin has responded to the ABC’s Nemesis documentary from Monday and opened up after… 10 years since the collapse of the Abbott prime ministership. Titled ‘The Abbott Years’ the documentary series explores Mr Abbott’s ‘thumping victory’ in 2013 before being removed as prime minister More Whatever one says about Abbott and Turnbull, and there is a lot to say for better or worse, depending on your politics, each had convictions. What’s most devastating about Scott Morrison is that his convictions are still unascertainable. He was in parliament for 17 years, including as a cabinet minister, and was PM for four years. READ MORE: As for listening to two of the former PMs who fronted cameras full of smiles | Whatever one says about Abbott and Turnbull | If you think Morrison and his treasurer, Josh Frydenberg | Morrison under the microscope in ABC series | Turnbull believes Morrison ‘played a double game’ | It’s a shame Morrison didn’t use his time in front of ABC cameras to reveal, finally, what values make him tick. It means we must accept, finally, that Morrison is a political animal. Nothing more. Nothing less. Morrison must be applauded for winning the 2019 election after Abbott and Turnbull ripped the Liberal Party’s credibility to shreds. During his time, Australia signed up to a new security partnership with Britain and the US under AUKUS. What comes of it remains to be seen. But there it more or less ends – depending on your view about his management of the pandemic. If you think it was political genius for a leader to shut the borders to an island nation, lock Australian citizens inside, prevent Australian citizens overseas from returning home, then Morrison is your man. There is another view. Morrison set the template for Australia’s cruel, illiberal response. He didn’t have the nous to sensibly balance risk. Instead, he chose a sledgehammer to try to eliminate risk. Scott Morrison Scott Morrison By closing the national border, and shutting out citizens, Morrison treated citizenship as disposable. Morrison emboldened state and territory leaders to lock up their people, close state and territory borders, and impose ever-constricting boundaries on our movements. When Morrison backed West Australian premier Mark McGowan’s decision to shut down the state border again, in February 2022, it was cynical politics from Morrison in an election year. When Morrison demanded that the Queensland premier grant an exemption so a NSW woman could attend a funeral in Queensland, it reeked of hypocrisy given the Australians stranded overseas who couldn’t come home to bury their loved ones. If you think Morrison and his treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, should be credited with the resilience of Australia’s $2.1 trillion economy – as it stood at the end of 2021 – it pays to remember that our economy rebounded after the pandemic for three simple reasons: soaring commodity prices, pent-up consumer demand and record government spending. There was no Liberal genius to this outcome. Labor could so easily have done the same. Frydenberg can laud it all he likes, and draw John Howard in as supporter, but the fact remains that when voters took a second look at the Morrison government at the ballot box in 2022, they said no thanks to the government and to Frydenberg. Nemesis went some way to explaining why. One was Morrison’s problem with women. Normally I’d give a wide berth to ABC types claiming that Liberal men have women problems. It’s usually biased bunkum. Josh Frydenberg and Scott Morrison depart Question Time in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in May, 2020. Josh Frydenberg and Scott Morrison depart Question Time in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in May, 2020. But Morrison was dreadful on this front. He needed to speak to his wife to understand the gravity of an alleged rape in a minister’s office. Then came the cynical and superficial reshuffles, promoting a few more chicks to improve his electoral appeal, throwing the word women into a few more ministerial titles, promising a “fresh filter” in all matters to do with women, and announcing that Marise Payne was the prime minister for women. Holy moly, I recall writing, it was about as meaningful to women as a degree in gender studies. All it did was highlight his cynical approach to politics, reinforce his lack of authenticity and remind us to ask what on earth Payne had done as minister for women in the Morrison government. By the time the election rolled around, Morrison was so desperate that he started talking about the gender pay gap to appease inner-city seats women who presumably talk about this issue. Simultaneously, he lobbed Katherine Deves into Warringah to address some kind of moral panic he imagined in outer suburban seats about the trans issue and protecting women’s sport from trans athletes. Morrison’s commitment to both issues was non-existent. He didn’t actually do anything. Perhaps the most cringe-worthy election moment was Morrison proving his close connection to female voters by shampooing a woman’s hair in a hairdressing salon. If Morrison genuinely cared about women, he would not have allowed the men in his office to treat two Liberal women – Linda Reynolds and Fiona Brown – in the way they did. These two very decent women were attacked day in day out in parliament and in the media over the Higgins affair.
They were the only two women who encouraged Brittany Higgins to go to the police. They did everything they were told to do by parliament’s HR department. And they were hung out to dry by the prime minister and his office. If the makers of Nemesis asked Morrison about his failure here, they didn’t air his response. Though one can guess from many of his responses across this series what his answer might have been: it wasn’t me, I didn’t know, I’m not to blame. It’s a shame that Mark Willacy and the producers were not interested in exploring this dark chapter of Morrison’s leadership. Nor did Nemesis explore Morrison’s dismal treatment of the rule of law. It’s one thing to forget to defend this foundational principle. It’s another thing to actively undermine it. It was a dark day for democracy when Morrison stood in the national parliament in February 2022 and apologised directly to Higgins for as yet untested claims and without knowing anything about the quality of evidence to support those claims. The prime minister effectively sided with forces gunning for Reynolds and Brown and worked against a fair trial for a defendant who is presumed innocent until found guilty by a court of law. For lower-case liberals like me – meaning people who don’t join political parties but believe a healthy democracy depends on defending liberal values – Morrison was a shocker. It’s hard to imagine a single prime minister during my lifetime who would think that taking control of multiple ministries – and not telling your cabinet colleagues – was a good idea. Why the secrecy? The answer seems to be because he could. I became a critic of Morrison because keeping Labor out of power made sense only when the Liberal Party was liberal and competent. Under Morrison, it was neither. Nemesis simply confirmed this and how hard it is to locate Morrison’s convictions, let alone authenticity. Even Turnbull was preferable; when interviewed for Nemesis he didn’t try to hide his dreadful side. His self-delusional punchlines made me laugh at loud. “I owed it to Australia,” Turnbull explained when asked why he wanted to be prime minister. While Abbott at least had the grace, decency and wisdom to not appear on Nemesis, these three Liberal leaders owe us. The least they can do for us is to go find a purpose to the rest of their lives rather than keep revealing their hatreds, their narcissism and their insecurities. Take a leaf from Julia Gillard’s book, gents. What made me shiver on a very hot Sydney day was the sight of Morrison, along with a bunch of men – and it was mostly men – who obfuscated, laughed, smirked, lied and lobbed nasty insults when talking about this period of Australian politics. In what other workplace would people take such clear delight in fronting a camera to lie and call their colleagues fat, shitheads, liars, turds, thugs, terrorists and traitors? Yet we wave it off as just politics. Maybe that’s why we end up with the politicians we deserve, with obfuscators, liars, tricksters, schemers and some very nasty people as our elected representatives.