Was Tony Abbot Australia’s worst prime minister?

This article argues yes. The main reasons are his disastrous and uncaring budget of 2014, but many additional reasons are given in Nikki Savva's The Road to Ruin, How Peta Credlin and Tony Abott Destroyed Their Own Goodwill.

But first some history: After graduating from Oxford, Abbott briefly trained as a Roman Catholic seminarian. He stood for the division of Warringah at the 1994 Warringah by-election, before the election of the Howard government in 1996. Following the 1998 election, Abbott was appointed Minister for Employment Services in the second Howard ministry. He was promoted in 2001 as Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business. In 2003, Abbott became Minister for Health and Ageing, retaining this position until the defeat of the Howard government at the 2007 election. Abbot resigned from the front bench in November 2009, in protest against Turnbull's support for the Rudd government's proposed Emissions Trading Scheme. Forcing a leadership ballot on the subject, Abbott narrowly defeated Turnbull to become the party's leader and leader of the opposition. Abbott led the Liberal-National Coalition to the 2010 federal election, which resulted in a hung parliament, and an eventual victory for the Australian Labor Party. Abbott remained leader, and led the Coalition to a landslide victory at the 2013 election.

Nikki Savva writes in The Road to Ruin, winner of the 2017 Australian book industry awards, general non-fiction book of the year and winner of the 2016 Melbourne press club lifetime achievement award, that

Abbott's performances in the party-room debates on education and climate change had ranged between woeful and pathetic. He sounded desperate, he was inconsistent, and - his colleagues thought - slightly ridiculous.

The book's subtitle is How Peta Credlin and Tony Abott Destroyed Their Own Goodwill. Savva describes their relationship as simply "weird." Senior members of the government told Niki Savva, journalist for The Australian, that they tried to get Abbott to sack Credlin and avoid losing the leadership. Savva writes that one of Abbott's most loyal lieutenants, conservative New South Wales Liberal Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, sounded the warning the night before the first attempt to oust Mr Abbott as leader in February 2015.

This writer's main objection was Tony Abott's budget with Treasurer Joe Hockey in 2014 which was a disaster. Political journalist Chris Uhlmann says the "catastrophe" was "he broke a slew of promises". Delivered barely nine months into his term, it was the beginning of the end.

The budget was an extraordinarily inequitable attempt to repair Australia's finances, offending the egalitarian streak that still runs deep in the Australian psyche.

Low-income families were hit hard, the middle class even harder, sole parents hardest of all. The incomes of the wealthiest 20 per cent of Australians were largely protected, declining by just 0.2 per cent.

Nikki Savva's book describes the budget as harsh, full of broken promises (which) "contributed to Abbott and Hockey's steep decline".

Abbott was defeated in the 2019 election and thrown out of office by an independent. On election night, as Australia voted to return the Liberal-National Party government of Scott Morrison, one seat defied the trend – Warringah. Tony Abbott, former prime minster, Howard-era minister, pugilist and could have been priest, had lost this Liberal heartland seat to barrister and former Olympic skier Zali Steggall.

Warringah, running from North Sydney to Manly, up to Dee Why and then inland to Forestville, is a long-held conservative seat, never having been won before by Labor or independents in its 97-year history.

Abbott on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is another issue. Tony Abbott made ''a pledge in blood'' to repeal Labor's carbon price, which was the sweeping reform designed to transform Australia's economy and cut its greenhouse emissions. The CPRS legislation followed the Garnaut Climate Change Review. Ross Garnaut, a prominent economist, proposed emissions targets that environmentalists considered inadequate. Meanwhile industry, which would have incurred costs under the scheme, was unhappy with the limited compensation proposed.

The opposition promised that action to repeal the carbon tax would be the ''first order of business'' for an incoming Coalition government.

The spectre of Tony Abbott looms behind Peter Dutton's climate strategy, writes political columnist Michelle Grattan.

In his assault this week on the Albanese government's climate policy, Peter Dutton is taking the Liberals right back to Tony Abbott's days.

It's a bold, risky big-target strategy, characterised by a truck load of negativity, as well as laced with a dash of policy adventurism.

Former chief scientist Ian Lowe, in an article in the Guardian, declared: "Given community attitudes, it looks like the silliest political death wish in recent history".

What other Prime Ministers compete for the title of Australia's worst? The Australian Financial Review asked six historians to answer the question "who were the best five and who were the worst five prime ministers since 1901?". Five points were awarded to each historian's choice as the best and worst prime minister, and so on down to one point for the fifth best and fifth-worst prime ministers. The five worst were Harold Holt, Joseph Cook, James Scullin, George Reid and William McMahon.

Harold Holt, (1966–67) supported US policies in Vietnam and sponsored the visit to Australia of Lyndon B Johnson, the first American president-in-office to travel here.

In the 1913 election, Joseph Cook became Australia's sixth prime minister as leader of the Liberal party with just one seat majority. Cook's political opponents often pointed out to him what they considered to be the fluid nature of his political principles. Cook had gone on a journey from trade unionist and Labour Party member to Commonwealth Liberal. Cook himself saw this as a natural progression for a self-made man. 

Cook accepted a ministry from his political opponent Free Trade Premier George Reid and he was denounced as 'the first of the Labour rats.'

James Scullin on 21 October 1929 was Australia's 9th Prime Minister. But 2 years later, Scullin said his term as Prime Minister was like a nightmare. The Wall Street crash took place in the first week of his government. He faced the crisis of economic depression by attempting to manage a failing economy while implementing Labor reforms.

George Reid was Prime Minister from 1904 to 1905, and Leader of the Opposition for six of the first seven years of the Australian parliament. Reid is remembered more for his quirks than his acquittal of the roles of parliamentary representative, party leader, prime minister, and Australia's founding high commissioner in London. His significant role in the creation of the commonwealth was overshadowed by the mischaracterisation of his exposition of the potential costs as well as the benefits of federation, as equivocation – earning him the scathing nickname "Yes-No Reid"

He held office for less than a year

William McMahon was Prime Minister from 1971 to 1972. He was first elected to Federal Parliament in 1949, and held the seat of Lowe, in Sydney, for 33 years. He was 63 years old when he became prime minister, the oldest after John McEwen at 67 years old. He was also one of three prime ministers to have a baby while in office; the others were Joseph Lyons and Andrew Fisher. He had a long and very public struggle with John Gorton. He had a history of internal party conflict and distrust. His government was defeated by Labor in 1972.

It is relatively easy to see why the above were classified as Australia's worst. Quirky people, voted into power at a difficult time in Australian history and not mainstream. Tony Abbott also fits this categorisation.

So what makes a great Australian Prime Minister Readers of this opinion piece may disagree, but this writer puts his requirements as:

1. Obeys the universal moral rule: help those who need help; harm no one.
2. Builds the economy and maximises employment.

So who was Australia's greatest? That is another article.