View from the Street: Is Tony Abbott still Prime Minister? How about now? Or now?

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This was published 9 years ago

View from the Street: Is Tony Abbott still Prime Minister? How about now? Or now?

Your news of the weekend, reduced to a snarky rant.

By Andrew P Street
Updated

With friends like these…

NSW premier Mike Baird should, by any reasonable assumption, waltz back into the big chair after the upcoming state election.

"No, I'm just looking over here. No reason. He's still behind me, isn't he? Wink when he moves away."

"No, I'm just looking over here. No reason. He's still behind me, isn't he? Wink when he moves away."Credit: James Alcock

He's generally regarded as a straight shooter - which isn't that high a bar to clear by the standards of NSW politics, since "straight shooter" means "hasn't yet been exposed in some sort of insidiously corrupt development deal" - and he's facing an opposition that will probably turn up any minute now.

However, there's one great unknown in all this, and that is the Federal Liberal Party. Specifically, the popularity thereof.

People don't make distinctions between the parties at various levels and the Liberals have lost three state elections since the Abbott government arrived. They failed to unseat a tired and unpopular Labor government in South Australia and were turfed out in Victoria and - most surprisingly - Queensland after a single term.

And Baird's team know that the biggest threat to them is not Labor leader Luke Foley, a man who inspires a rousing "…who?" in the hearts and minds of the NSW public. It's Tony Abbott.

In most of the current polling Baird leads Foley by a fairly comfortable six per cent - although there is increasing controversy over plans to privatise the state's electricity assets, and inner city rumblings over the controversial WestConnex freeway. Still, that sort of buffer should be enough to reassure Baird that his government will be returned on March 28.

Except that the party have done their own polling and found that this buffer is reduced in National held seats by three per cent and in Liberal-held seats by seven per cent whenever the PM is gripped by controversy, in what has been dubbed "The Abbott Effect".

It's a complex idea, but it's down to physics: a butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo and causes a leadership spill in Canberra. At least, I think that's how Ashton Kutcher explained it.

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Something about rocks and places that aren't soft

The gist of the problem is that whatever the state party does is drowned out by the noise from the latest Canberran screw up. Given how close the Queensland election was in January, it's actually genuinely possible that it was ultimately decided by the PM's decision to give Prince Philip a knighthood in the Australia Day honours.

And what was February like for the federal government?

We've seen a spill motion tabled in the Liberal party room, a pledge that "good government starts today", confused contradictions regarding submarine construction, the sacking of Philip Ruddock as chief whip, more confusion over implementation of data retention laws, and a veritable flood of leaks about backbench unhappiness over what they see as undue influence from Abbott's chief of staff Peta Credlin.

Oh, and there was that whole kerfuffle with the Human Rights Commission over their report on children in detention, and the subsequent at-best-dodgy-at-worst-illegal attempt to convince it's head, Professor Gillian Triggs, to resign ahead of an impossibly undignified character assassination by Abbott and Attorney General George Brandis.

Oh, and you may have noticed the odd bit of speculation about some chap named Malcolm Turnbull.

Is it too late for Baird to rebrand the party before the election? The Australian Miberal Party, perhaps? Or the NSW Not-Abbotts? Mikey Mike and the Funky Bunch?

Let's be honest: that's an election-winning name, right there.

Hey, Damocles: sweet sword you have there!

What's even more problematic is that the general consensus in both the party and the previously Abbott-lovin' business community appears to be that Abbott is going to need to be removed as leader at some point. The question is when.

Dumping him before the NSW election would be a huge, unwelcome distraction. However, leaving Abbott as leader at least until the end of the month means equally-distracting speculation over when the axe will fall.

What's more, there are four weeks until the election and federal parliament sits for three of them, and on recent form you can assume something will go explosively wrong.

Will it be the likely backdown over the oh-so-necessary GP fees, or the fallout of the delayed Intergenerational Report from the Treasurer's office, or the still-stalled higher education reforms, or the serious questions about the necessity for the still-shadowy new security laws? Who can tell!

Seriously, Baird: Mikey Mike and the Funky Bunch. Who wouldn't vote for that?

A quick moment of perspective

And while we might feel frustrated about the current dog's breakfast that is federal politics, let's pause for a moment here and reflect upon the fact that we live in a country where leadership speculation and political disagreement is carried out with words and organisational processes, and not by shooting the leader of the opposition dead.

Boris Nemtsov, former deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltzen turned leader of the opposition PARNAS coalition, was shot in the street on Friday night, just metres from the Kremlin.

And before you leap to the obvious conclusion, know that Russian president Vladimir Putin also reckons that it was a hit. "Putin noted that this was a cruel murder and bears all the signs of a contract killing which appears exclusively provocative," said his spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

But before you start accusing the Russian government of having assassinated an increasingly popular leader who had accused Putin of moving Russia towards fascism and bemoaned the "costly, fratricidal war in Ukraine and into pointless confrontation with the West", then know that Putin's considered that possibility and concluded nah, definitely not.

In fact, the Kremlin have declared that this was "provocation" by shadowy figures keen to make the government look bad - probably Islamists for some reason, or the opposition party themselves. Which seems a stretch, even by Russian conspiracy standards.

After all, can you think of a single time that a vocal critic of Putin has been assassinated in suspiciously government-ordered-looking ways? No, you definitely cannot - isn't that right, KGB-agent-turned-whistleblower Alexander Litvinenko? Whaddya reckon, outspoken leftist lawmaker Sergey Yushenkov? Any thoughts, human rights campaigner Anna Politkovskaya?

Hmmm, you all seem weirdly quiet on the subject. We'll take your silence as tacit agreement, then.

The cocktail hour: c'mon c'mon, feel it feel it!

Look, Mike Baird: it was good enough for Mark Wahlberg - and look at him now! He's a Hollywood A-lister, getting to pretend to fight giant robots from space and pretend to be a military hero in Afghanistan and actually fail to overturn his conviction for racially-motivated assaults on African American and Asian people. OK, maybe don't focus so much on that last bit.

Just learn these moves, and the election is a cinch. And cheers!

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