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Abbott has become more and more unpopular with the electorate since the middle of last year, but from the moment he was elected, many on the left, including the left wing media were mounting what was, in essence, a campaign of hatred against him, often relying on blatant dishonesty, and exaggeration. I'm going to post, again, something I wrote the other day trying to lay out why Abbott has become generally unpopular.

Unpopularity. I'll post again, an analysis I wrote the other day as to why I believe he's unpopular.

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 promises, 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.