Statement by Tony Abbott, MP, Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia

Office of the Prime Minister, Australia ^ | 6th February 2015

[naturalman1975]

Statement by the Honourable Tony Abbott, MP, Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia

As you know, two of my colleagues have called for a leadership spill of the two senior positions in our party. They’ve called for a spill of my position as leader and they’ve called for a spill of Julie Bishop’s position as deputy.

The first point to make is that they are perfectly entitled to call for this, but the next point to make is that they are asking the partyroom to vote out the people that the electorate voted in, in September 2013.

I want to make this very simple point. We are not the Labor Party. We are not the Labor Party and we are not going to repeat the chaos and the instability of the Labor years, so I have spoken to deputy leader Julie Bishop and we will stand together in urging the partyroom to defeat this particular motion and in so doing, and in defeating this motion, to vote in favour of the stability and the team that the people voted for at the election.

We have a strong plan. It’s the strong plan that I enunciated at the Press Club this week and we are determined to get on with it, and we will

[naturalman1975]

I am resubmitting this in the hope it doesn't get pulled like the last one. I didn't have a link or source I could share this with, because it was from a press release emailed to me from the Prime Ministers office, and I can't link to my emails here. It is a genuine statement from the conservative Prime Minister of Australia as to what he intends to do about attempts to kick him out of office. Personally I think it's of interest here. I'm rather annoyed at the thread being pulled given that it meant a long reply I'd spent about twenty minutes writing responding to questions as to what was going on was lost.

I can now provide a link which shows that what I posted was entirely accurate. Unfortunately sometimes the media isn't as up to date as somebody on the ground is.

[mitch5501]

Oh joy.

[BigEdLB]

Hang in there, Mr Prime Minister

[Praxeologue]

I would still love to know if PM Abbott did anything wrong, or if this is entirely a leftist reality distortion field.

[Praxeologue]

“E&OE”, LOL

[naturalman1975]

I'm trying to reconstruct the long reply I had written on that which was lost when I tried to post it. It is mostly undeserved - but there have been some genuine errors. Undeserved - large sections of the media blaming the Abbott government for things that were caused by the previous Labor government. Examples - (1) Labor reopened the detention centre on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea to deal with the influx of asylum seekers their policies had created. They didn't upgrade the facilities to deal with the numbers of people they were sending there. Now there are major problems at the centre, and the media is screaming that the Abbott government hasn't fixed them. (2) Under Labor, Australian intelligence services bugged the phone of the President of Indonesia. Leaving aside the fact that this is really just a normal intelligence operation, the media found this out prior to the last election and deliberately sat on the story to avoid embarassing the Labor government. It only came out after Labor had lost the election, when it could damage the new governments diplomacy with Indonesia - and many people were left with the false impression that the spying had occurred after the election rather than before it. (3) Labor (and the Greens) won't pass the budget through the Senate and because of that, Australia's economic position is deteriorating. We can fix the budget if we can't pass the budget. But rather than blaming Labor and the Greens for blocking the budget, the media would prefer to blame the government. (4) The media is treating promises for funding from 2018 onwards that Labor never intended to deliver as if they were genuine problems, and so are describing Abbott as having cut funding to education and health based on those empty promises, even though the budget for both is actually increasing.

Genuine issues - (1) A spur of the moment statement the night before the election has created a sound bite that can be used to attack the Prime Minister for breaking an election promise. The issue is actually more complicated than that - technically no promise was broken - but the sound bite should never have happened. (2) The Prime Minister is a lousy salesman. He hasn't explained why certain things are necessary (for example, why they need to reform health funding), he's simply tried to push ahead with the changes without explaining them. As he can't get them through the Senate, it means wasting political capital for nothing. (3) On some issues (in particular one relating to freedom of speech/freedom of the press), Abbott has moved to the centre and alienated the conservative base. He probably had to abandon the plan as he would have never got it through the Senate, but some of us would have preferred him to try that fight, even if he lost it, rather than simply give up in the apparent hope of gaining some support from the centre and the left, that he was never likely to get in the current climate. (4) He sometimes acts without consulting his Cabinet as much as he should - he's the leader and he's allowed to act unilaterally, but some things he's done has taken his Cabinet by surprise - even if all he does is tell them "This is what I am going to do, and I won't be argued with," it would have been better than doing it without even telling them. (5) This last one happened at the start of last week, and is partly an illustration of some of the other problems. He announced that Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh had been given a Knighthood of the Order of Australia. Very minor, totally symbolic, but it sent the left wing media into an absolute frenzy of irrational hatred and they've turned it into a huge story - and even many conservative columnists can't understand why he spent political capital on something that mattered so little at a time when people are looking for reasons to attack him.

Finally - his single biggest success - stopping the flow of asylum seekers to Australia - is one a lot of Australians are uncomfortable with, even though they wanted it to happen. It makes it hard to use it as an electoral plus. Nobody wants the asylum seekers here - but at the same time, nobody wants to be seen as cruel or unkind to desperate people. The Australian public want a government to do what this one has done - but they don't want to feel personally responsible for it.

[Praxeologue]

Many of Abbott's limitations, as you have described them, relate to lack of, or unskillful, communication. Canada's PM Harper is a soft-spoken man who is anything but charismatic. He communicates regularly, however, on every issue, with the media, caucus and cabinet. He is tough with the media, not granting interviews with unfriendly media. He has his favoured journalists. You can imagine that is a small group, since conservative Canadian journalists are no more numerous than, I imagine, conservative Australian journalists. In addition, he has assembled and employed several dynamic individuals as ministers who have communicated and sold government policy to the voters. This formula appears to have worked for Harper's nine years as PM.

Abbott and Harper should have a meeting soon.

[octex]

I appreciate your posting and the more detailed explanation of what is happening in OZ with regard to Abbott.

I’ve considered him to be a good ally to the US, compared to some previous PMs there.

[NRx]

I have heard rumors that he was in political trouble and hope it’s not as serious as some are suggesting. Abbott is the best PM Australia has had in a long time.

[naturalman1975]

The Prime Minister has survived the vote - 61-39.