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Tony Abbott: Australia’s Last Good Prime Minister?
It’s often said that Australia needs to become a republic because of our lagging reputation in Asia. Many believe, for example, that our institutional attachment to the British Monarchy puzzles the masses and implies an old-world attachment that tugs on our standing in the region.
Much less discussed, however, is how silly we must look changing leaders as often as our dirty clothes. Until recently, the turbulence of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years was behind us. We weren’t suffering from closed-door union deals and the disruptive leadership of the Australian Labor Party. Abbott had stopped illegal boat arrivals to Australia, was fiercely paying down Rudd’s debt, ending silly government programs, and restoring a relative lack of prestige to the executive arm of government.
Yet Australia’s modern media cycle won’t permit such stable conduct: it is, after all, boring. The constant scan for sensationalism means that minor issues like giving out awards (Abbott’s honor to Prince Phillip) and, most recently, harmless jokes about rising sea levels in the South Pacific choke out issues of substance and having a steady pair of hands on the nation’s wheel.
What qualifies as “news” in Australia today, from a Kim Kardashian selfie to the lethal simplicity of hashtag I’ll-ride-with-you symbolism, is embarrassing for Australia where interest on debt is now one of the nation’s biggest expenses and where fused unemployment, sagging productivity, and a mix of red and green tape are becoming common features of the economic landscape. Entitlement spending, in a country with unprecedented affluence, is not decreasing but growing year after year.
A sobering look at the Abbott leadership will see a conservative leader that — after less than two years in the job — was never really given a chance, especially by so many that were eager to see him fail and constantly paint him as sexist, gaffe-prone buffoon who’s too knockabout to be Australia’s leader.
The lesson of history is that good democracies benefit from elected leaders who aren’t always charming or charismatic. “For each Washington and Lincoln,” writes the American historian Patrick Allitt, “there have been half a dozen nonentities, presidents like Van Buren, Tyler, Harrison, Polk, Taft and Harding, who are deservedly forgotten by all but the professional historians. There’s a lot to be said for their lack of charisma; what the system needed was caretakers, and this was the role they played.”
Eyes now turn to Australia’s new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who — even many conservatives believe — is not a caretaker but someone cut in the mold of Bill Clinton: i.e., someone constantly seeking power and the public spotlight over any seasoned path of principle or reform. “Whether Turnbull wins the next election or loses,” says Australian columnist Andrew Bolt, “conservative Liberals will feel they have lost already, now that a man of such ‘progressive’ views has snatched the leadership of their party.”
Not so long ago, Australia benefitted from leaders like John Howard, Paul Keating, and Bob Hawke – strong reformers from both sides of the aisle who were given time and space to pursue their agendas without the constant need to always capture headlines. None, it seems, could be granted such room in the hyper-kaleidoscopic arena of today’s public discussion.
Turnbull, with a strong background of achievement, clearly has decent ideas for solving some of Australia’s biggest hurdles. But as Abbott’s demise shows that isn’t enough: it will only be a matter of time before the same impatience that destroyed Abbott will do the same to Turnbull.
Published in Politics
Australian politics is fascinating, the dismissal of Gough Whitlam in 1975 particularly so. I didn’t follow Tony Abbott’s tenure as Prime Minister very closely, but it seemed to me that he was doing a good job. It seems that the Liberals are making the same mistake that Labor made in 2010.
What a shame.
Thanks for this, Sean. Last year, I became friends with an Australian couple who spent a year here in Florence, and their favorite pastime was ragging on Abbott. But my impression of the man was always positive, and my husband, who lived in NSW for eight years, liked him, too.
We visited Australia last year and uniformly heard from guides and other people we talked with about how they hated Abbot. We loved Australia and Australians. I’m sorry to hear about this because it looks like rough times ahead. I do think that the US rivals y’all for trivial politics though. Behold, the master of the trivial and offensive: Trump. I still think we get past this buffoon in the end, but I am worried. After all, we elected a trivial buffoon twice just recently….
This is the first time I have ever heard this argument. I certainly never heard anything like this when I was in Asia, where the masses are very attached to their own old-world – witness all the historical dramas in virtually every country.
Strange, I had been hearing that Abbott was in trouble from the right in his party, not from his left. Weren’t conservatives in his party upset that Abbott was being too squishy?
Polk was a caretaker?
Heh…and the insult to Harding is too much for me to bear.
Can either or both of you elaborate?
I’m afraid it’s not just Australia, though at least the most recent British PMs have managed to keep their parties together for a decent length of time.
I pray for your sake Turnbull is a better prime minister than you fear, and that the party finds its way back.
I am very distraught and angry.
I don’t want to call my fellow citizens morons, but they seem very gullible to media hyperbole.
The excuse for the coup was poll numbers, but as we’ve seen in recent global elections, polling has become very inaccurate.
Our main centre-right party has just spat in the face of its enthusiastic conservative base to chase green lefty votes. Good luck with that fantasy.
Turnbull has probably blown up his own party. He has spent most of the last two years campaigning on left-wing talk panels and leaking embarrassing tidbits to the media to undermine his own leader. Today this Mr Everything is polling 70%. I say he will be lucky to have 30% if he’s still around in a year. I know how the tea party must feel now.
Tony Abbott had his flaws but he put the country first and displayed incredible loyalty to his colleagues, many of whom just knifed him. Meanwhile the public is traumatised and confidence in the whole parliamentary system is collapsing. The hundred-odd micro-parties will be the big winners, if ‘winners’ is the right word.
Polk was basically Mr. Manifest Destiny, at least for the western part–Texas became a state under his tenure, and he annexed the southwest from Mexico (and won a quick war to enforce that annexation). He also threatened war with England to get the deal that gave us the lower part of Oregon (the Pacific Northwest now). I’ve heard he was very charismatic and a great orator, although I suppose a certain amount of charisma is mandatory for becoming president.
I’d be interested to hear a defense of Harding though (in my mind “caretaker” would be a charitable description).
Yeah, Harding presided over perhaps the most notoriously corrupt administration in history didn’t he? He was likely the opposite of a caretaker.
So distressing. It is incredibly easy to bring down conservative politicians when media is against them and many in their own party have hopped on board with the lefty project, but see a pathway to power by pretending to be conservative (Trumpish behavior). What you end up with is a muddle, as you point out, and muddles are the thing I have come to fear most in life. You have a beautiful country with a fascinating history. I pray this is the low point and people see Trumbull’s treachery for what it is.
@Grosseteste- “He also threatened war with England to get the deal that gave us the lower part of Oregon (the Pacific Northwest now”
Are you sure, in retrospect, that getting ‘Portlandia’ was a benefit to the U.S?
Yes. If the Californians who made it into Portlandia hadn’t gone there, they’d have gone somewhere else.