Abbott’s blunder

Tony Abbott again showed again why he is not fit to be the Australian prime minister last week when, during a trip to England, he offended British politicians along with Australian soldiers serving in Afghanistan.

The Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader both went abroad last week. Tony Abbott flew to Britain for a British Conservative Party conference and, at about the same time, Julia Gillard flew to Afghanistan, on her way to Europe, to meet with our forces in that country. In a press conference in Afghanistan, Gillard revealed that Abbott had been invited to accompany her to meet with Australian troops.

In Birmingham at the conference, Abbott explained his decision:

“I thought it was important to do this trip justice, I didn't want to get here entirely in a jetlagged condition.”

Understandably, this statement was poorly received by serving soldiers and their families. One parent, Mrs Ward, told the Herald Sun:

"It's all about him, isn't it? I think they need all the support they can get, because it's a hell of a place and their morale is knocked down pretty easy, so it hurts when people say they can't be bothered ... Our boys are putting their lives on the line, the least he could do is go over there and say 'thank you'."

Beyond the public outrage, Abbott's "jet lag" explanation quickly began to unravel after the Prime Minister was reported as saying that she had quite easily managed to get eight hours sleep before her official engagements in Europe on Tuesday. In fact, Abbott was not due to meet the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, until Wednesday, well after Julia Gillard had met with a host of EU officials in Brussels.

It should be remembered that Tony Abbott has given himself the extraordinary luxury of being able to make things up without fearing censure. He gave himself this licence earlier this year when he told Kerry O’Brien on the 7.30 Report:

"I know politicians are going to be judged on everything they say, but sometimes in the heat of discussion you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark, which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth are those carefully prepared, scripted remarks."

No surprises then, when speaking to the ABC's UK correspondent Alexandra Kirk on the ABC's AM program on Wednesday, Abbott now claimed to have misrepresented himself:

"Look it was a very poor choice of words on my part and I apologise if I've created the wrong impression and I apologise if I've given offence because the last thing I would want to do is give offence to the families of our troops."

Kirk asked Abbott why, then, had he given the jet-lag excuse in the first place, to which Abbott offered the following answer:

"Well, because I thought the question was about my visit to the British Conservative Party conference here and I guess it was just a very poor choice of words."

It seems that Abbott’s real reason for not travelling to Afghanistan to visit Australian combat troops was that he didn't want to arrive in a run-down state at a British Conservative Party Conference.

This is a surprising statement coming from a super-fit “iron-man”, who has so much energy and such little regard for sleep that he stayed awake for 36 hours straight in the final days of the Federal election campaign.

And, as an excuse to troops, it is highly questionable whether attending a conference for an ideologically aligned political party in a foreign nation will strike them as being more important than visiting them in a war-zone. Or that voters will be much impressed to find that, in terms of priorities, it is more important for him to stay fresh for a visit to Britain than it is to be in tip-top condition when he is on the verge of becoming the new Prime Minister of Australia.

Kirk asked Abbott why he needed to attend the conference at all:

“I think it's important that I be here at this conference because the Conservative Party has taken power in Britain at a very critical time. Obviously, they've inherited a fiscal disaster from a profligate Labour government, and the next Coalition government in Australia will inherit a fiscal disaster from a profligate Labor Government. So, I think it's important that I be here to learn the lessons of cleaning up the kind of fiscal mess which profligate Labor governments typically leave.”

This comment has not been very widely reported or its importance fully appreciated by the Australian press, or so it seems. In fact, it is a serious diplomatic blunder by Tony Abbott. It is a comment that has the power to damage Australia’s future bilateral relationship with Britain.

It can be directly compared with Prime Minister John Howard’s February 2007 comments about then Presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s plans to withdraw US Forces from Iraq. Then, Howard told the Nine Network:

"I think he's wrong. I think that will just encourage those who want to completely destabilise and destroy Iraq and create chaos and a victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for an Obama victory.”

At that time, Howard was severely rebuked by both Republicans and Democrats for interfering in US domestic politics. In Australia, he was also condemned, but because of the understanding that, if Obama was elected and Howard was re-elected, then the relationship between Australia and its major ally could be compromised by ill-will between the two nation’s leaders. Thankfully, Howard was not re-elected.

In the UK, the Conservative minority government holds power only because of a new coalition with the Liberal Democrats, a progressive party that has historically been regarded as more natural ideological fellows of the opposing Labour Party. It was especially rash of Tony Abbott to criticise and deride the UK Labour Party, the previous government, when this Party could take power again in Britain at almost any time, depending on what happens in UK domestic politics. Irrespective of that, there will be an election in the next few years in the UK and at that election it is quite foreseeable that the Labour Party will regain power and resume governing Britain. Many in that government are likely to have been key figures in the previous Labour administration. If Abbott is then in power in Australia, the media should be asking: how closely will Abbott really be able to work with a Party that he has effectively accused of being hopelessly incompetent?

Like Howard, Abbott should be similarly placed in the dock for his statements. They were comments of unfathomable arrogance and poor judgment.

So, why did he make them?

One possible explanation is that Tony Abbott does not regard British politics as foreign to either himself or Australia.

It is well known that Tony Abbott was born in London and lived there as a child. He also lived in Britain as an adult for several years, completing an MA at Oxford. Additionally, he was once executive director of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, an organisation dedicated to preserving Australia’s subservience to the British monarchy.

Looked at in this context, it seems plausible that Abbott - like some other Liberal Party leaders before him, such as “British to the boot-straps” Bob Menzies - doesn’t regard Britain as a foreign nation at all. It may be that he feels that he has every right to comment on British domestic politics, and that Britain and Australia are not really foreign to each other in any case.

The other possible reason is ideology.

Tony Abbott is an ideological warrior. He first gained media attention in student politics as an undergraduate for stridently criticising the dominant left-wing student union leadership at the University of Sydney. After university, he entered public life as a journalist for The Bulletin and The Australian, where he became noted for his strongly worded articles criticising trade unions and left-wing politics. He called himself a “praetorian guard” in John Howard’s very conservative Coalition government, and was a strong advocate of the unpopular WorkChoices industrial relations changes. Last year he published a book explaining his Conservative ideology called Battlelines, a name that has a familiar martial ring to it.

As a warrior for the right, it may be that Abbott is less concerned by the possible future damage he could cause to Australia’s diplomatic relations with Britain than he is about helping the rise of conservative ideology around the world. This would explain why he needed to attend a British Conservative Party conference in preference to visiting Australian troops at war. The war in Afghanistan may have little interest for him, but the war against the left is of unquestionable importance.

We can only speculate as to the reasons why Tony Abbott made these statements and decisions, though the media should be pursuing him strongly on these matters. Whatever his reasons, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that’s Abbott’s rashness, lack of judgment and propensity to fabricate leaves major question marks over his suitability to be Australian Prime Minister. We may have dodged a bullet when the Independents decided against siding with an unpredictable Tony Abbott led Coalition.