First published 15 September 2015
The political death of Party leaders is a messy affair. It is often described as the politics of politics, but would be more aptly called the politics of the schoolyard.
Rumours, tale telling, gossip, unknown terrors and side eyes are the order of the day. These are the things that bring political life into disrepute and keep it there. The replacement of Mr Abbott by Mr Turnbull was characteristically messy.
It is hard to comment on Tony Abbott's demise without being splattered by the schoolyard mud. But we should begin by sparing a thought for the man himself in this time of humiliation. He has given his life to the Liberal Party, and to be disowned as leader by it is surely devastating.
Whatever of his political virtues and failings he never lacked courage and perseverance. And almost his last political decision was to welcome a large number of Syrian refugees into Australia. It was a generous gesture from a leader with whose policies many of us have frequently found fault for their narrowness. It was also generously endorsed by the Leader of the Opposition. This was a brief and welcome pause in many years of unrelentingly adversarial government.
With two major exceptions the Abbott Government was not effective in implementing its policies. Even the two exceptions — stopping the boats and abolishing the carbon tax — have left dangerous rents in Australian public life. In budgeting, education and many other areas the Government has not been able to get its legislation passed.
These failures cannot be put down to Mr Abbott alone. They have flowed out of the first Budget, which reflected the views of the Party as a whole. It embodied an economic ideology that rewarded economically successful individuals and penalised the vulnerable. Economic growth was prized for its own sake even when it further consolidated wealth in the hands of the very few. The Budget was reviled for its unfairness and blocked in the Senate. Perhaps the tragedy of Mr Abbott's Prime Ministership is that he adopted as his own a brutal economic ideology that ran counter to the Christian vision of his hero, Bob Santamaria.
It is by no means clear that we should expect better from Mr Turnbull. He has given priority to economic development based on the free market. He has not made it clear how far that growth will be shaped by fairness and attention