A bitterly disappointed Tony Abbott has bowed out, blaming the media and treacherous colleagues for his downfall while vowing to do nothing to destabilise Malcolm Turnbull.
Mr Abbott, who lost Monday night’s leadership ballot by 54 voteds to 44 votes, said he was ousted by “poll-driven panic” and a “febrile media culture that has developed that rewards treachery”.
He accused the media of acting like the “assassin’s knife” for quoting unnamed sources when reporting leadership speculation.
Mr Abbott did not say whether he would quit politics or stay on the backbench but said he would allow Mr Turnbull to govern unimpeded.
“There will be no leaking, no undermining, no sniping,” he said.
A hypocrite and dunce to the end. Nobody is to blame for the demise of Tony Abbott except an inept Tony Abbott who:
- rose to power via a big lie about carbon pricing;
- outsourced the Budget repair job to corporations;
- butchered the Budget as a result by forgetting he was actually elected by people;
- performed with the aplomb of a trained monkey at the G20;
- egged on a raging housing bubble when institutions around him cried out for restraint;
- butchered his second Budget and wrecked the reform agenda in the process via giveaways;
- humiliated the nation with 19th century honours;
- introduced Draconian, costly and useless data gathering to monitor your porn sites;
- ruled out universally endorsed reform for super and property;
- championed dying coal and killed renewable energy despite a capex cliff;
- killed off gay marriage and installed brown shirts at every street corner to check your papers, and
- when everyone could see that his agenda was not much more than a grab-bag of personal chauvinisms, he dragged Australia into the ISIS conflict, making the nation a target for no reason other than to save his own sorry skin.
The Abbott Government should slide into history, quickly forgotten, one of those nasty memories that crop up occasionally and should never be mentioned in polite conversation.
