Ever since Tony Abbott was elected leader of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party, I've found myself feeling a need to defend him increasing.
Why is this feeling occurring? If I was a Federal Liberal Parliamentarian, there is every chance I wouldn't have voted for him, and certainly wouldn't have voted for him if there was a more palatable moderate alternative to Malcolm Turnbull and Joe Hockey.
Yesterday I joined the "Tony Abbott for PM" Facebook group. This immediately drew derision. My explanation that the choice was between Rudd and Abbott, so I choose Abbott, appeared to be fairly satisfactory.
However, it is clear that a solid constituency of people in the Australian electorate firmly believe that if elected Prime Minister, Tony Abbott will begin to work to create TraditionalCatholicistan. That he will immediately go to work to restrict the rights of women to such things as abortion, IVF, no-fault divorce, contraception, and other items that are synonymous with women's rights.
It is also clear that, no matter how many times Tony Abbott says he will not do what is described above, that these people don't believe him. They will not take him at his word.
Whether you think this is because of Abbott's alleged dishonesty, or his flip-floppery, or if it is just a stronger-than-usual manifestation of the electorate's distrust of their elected officials, doesn't really matter. I get the feeling Abbott could promise free condoms for everyone and he wouldn't be believed.
Abbott doesn't do himself any favours with women with little slip-ups like calling Julie Bishop a "loyal girl" or promising to avoid flirting with the Deputy Prime Minister. However, he also gets in trouble for some of his more substantive, sincerely held views on important issues.
He is on the record as stating that "100,000 abortions a year in Australia ... is a tragedy". Well, isn't it? He knows, as well as I (and we have both stated it publicly) that the solution isn't a ban on abortions. The solution lays elsewhere, but this statistic is tragic.
If you believe in the sanctity of life, and part of that belief is that life begins at conception, then chances are you are going to believe IVF technology as less than perfect. I'm certainly not a fan of the extreme wastage of embryos that is central to successful IVF treatment. But that doesn't mean either Abbott, or I if I was King for a day, would legislate to prohibit it. And Abbott has said as much, just yesterday.
The only affect the attacks on Abbott will have on someone like me, is that we'll feel compelled to defend him (his sincerely held religious beliefs also make me feel this compulsion), and we'll end up moving to the right in order to do that.
In the mid-to-late 1990s, many people who had received the raw end of globalisation and free trade heard a (completely bonkers) fish-and-chip proprietor from Queensland, and felt that she made some sense in some areas. She was immediately attacked and given attention she clearly didn't deserve. Only one political leader of any stature believed that the best way to deal with someone like Pauline Hanson was to ignore her, just as you would an annoying child in Art Class at Primary School. Hanson flamed out pretty quickly, out of Federal Parliament after just two-and-a-half years partly due to her insanity, but mainly due to her nutty policies, like a 2% flat tax.
I know a lot of women are afraid of what Tony Abbott may do. Remember that chances are he is not going to win the next election, or ever become Prime Minister. Maybe the best thing you can do is ignore him.
Climategate: it’s international
7 hours ago
