The cold, pallid glow from a gibbous midnight moon breaks through scudding clouds on an otherwise black and typically bleak, wintry Canberra. Buried beneath a fog-shrouded Capital Hill the halls of Parliament House are eerily deserted, yet a chillingly familiar, stuttering cackle echos down the long, dimly lit corridor of the back-benchers' wing - "ah...uh...uh...heh...heh...heh!"
In pushing aside the door marked Tony Abbott MHR the sound seems to come from a sarcophagus atop a large desk, its lid slightly ajar. Peering inside, drawn by an appalled anticipation of horrors to be revisited the curious snooper gapes, aghast at the familiar, waxy pallor with the lipless mouth drawn back into its awful grimace and is greeted by a sleazy wink. It's alive........alive! The horror is still alive!
C+. The Editor
Malcolm Turnbull did Australia a huge favour when he pulled the big, green swivel chair out from under Tony Abbott PM. The most destructive politician in our history was deservedly humiliated and to great public acclaim thrown into a dumpster on the back benches where it was thought he could cause only limited further damage.
But any hopes for a return to more thoughtful politics proved to be misplaced - dashed by Abbott's mendacity, spite and utter bastardry. His political corpse had more than a pulse; it was fully animated by his innate vindictiveness and zero sum mindset. He was prepared to sacrifice his party for his own vengeful ends.
A creature shaped by a friendless childhood and indoctrination into a Medieval religious dogma Abbott somehow developed a self-belief that scorned all facts, merit or logic. His is an ideology based on wreckage and destruction. With no imagination, no creativity, no ideas, no care for the truth he had only sabotage, lies and hypocrisy. His political style is akin to lighting farts in a fireworks factory.
Abbott plotted and schemed with his loony fringe acolytes who'd slipped through the crazy filter and finally succeeded in bringing down his nemesis Turnbull.
But he has not finished yet.
He plots further perfidy - withdrawal from the Paris agreement on carbon emissions, the end of any remediation of climate change, undermining of the electorate's endorsement of marriage equality, the break-up of the ABC and killing off any progressive initiatives. He will use these issues as an excuse to continue his malignant vendetta.
Abbott looked shaken after the Lib Party Room spill voted down his proxy - the dead-eyed dog Dutton. Gone for now was his lipless hyena-like grin, gone too his ludicrous bow-legged affectation that reminds me of a rodeo rider leaving a port-a-loo. But make no mistake, this scabrous gobshite, this simian seminarian from Warringah will continue to snipe and wreck and undermine. It's all he knows, it's his only talent.
If Parliament House had a belfry Abbott would have a suitable roost, hanging by his heels from the rafters. Without which his natural habitat is a Manly street corner with a sandwich board and loud-hailer - shouting at pigeons and pointing at brown people.