Palaszczuk shows Abbott how it's done

03 February 2015

So, Queensland is to have a new government. Its new premier, the first woman ever to win leadership from the diminished benches of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, a ‘nonentity’ whose winning was not considered even probable by those who write opinion columns in Murdoch newspapers.

Yet her party has been triumphant after an incandescently self-confident three year reign of Campbell Newman, who also lost his seat. This woman with a ‘foreign’ name will lead: a plain-spoken, modest-campaigner, reasonable and assured winner of her Dad’s old seat just eight years before.

Why? The swings were wild but ubiquitous. There would be those who didn’t like losing community services, public servants, public ownership of Queensland, or dreaded the planned befouling of the Great Barrier Reef, though not enough of them to matter (they vote Green).

Quite possibly, there would have been some who heard Fitzgerald plead that they note and act against the rising tide of nepotism, corruption and cosy deals between government and the privately rich and powerful in the Moonlight state. And there will be those who just don’t like being lied to or hectored.

PM Tony Abbott had done his bit for Queensland. Federal issues counted in this state election. Just five days before polling day Her Majesty’s obsequiously loyal Prime Minister made his Captain’s Pick in the Australia Day honours, appointing Her Majesty’s consort the Duke of Edinburgh to be an Australian knight. ‘Twas greeted universally with disbelief and laughter. Defence Minister Kevin Andrews was the only man willing to defend the act. It had been, the disappointed LNP said after the Poll results, merely a diversion.

I think it was more. It was provocative. It was a great over-reaching act of a self-described man of power: it showed the country the character of the man.

Abbott’s act went down so ill that Australian-born media baron, Rupert Murdoch, by twitter instructed his wooden-eared Prime Minister to sack his chief of staff, or that Peta Credlin herself should do her patriotic duty and resign, not that she had been consulted: one must punish the nearest powerful woman when men behave like boys.

Let us compare how Abbott, at his political nadir, is treated by the media and his political colleagues, with Julia Gillard. The irony.

After just 15 months of disastrous, unexpected, hamfisted decisions – from a bizarre budget that sought to break pre-election promises from no changes to pensions and schools funding, no cuts to

AUSTRALIA

Palaszczuk shows Abbott how it's done

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