Tony Abbott’s Sydney Institute speech criticises Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s ‘elitist attitude’
FORMER prime minister Tony Abbott will today unleash a stinging rebuke of modern Australian politics — including a thinly veiled take-down of Malcolm Turnbull’s elitist attitude and the growing gulf between the “talking class” and the “working class”.
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FORMER prime minister Tony Abbott will today unleash a stinging rebuke of modern Australian politics — including a thinly veiled take-down of Malcolm Turnbull’s elitist attitude and the growing gulf between the “talking class” and the “working class”.
Delivering a speech to the Sydney Institute tonight, Mr Abbott will deliver a brutal assessment of Mr Turnbull’s National Energy Guarantee and education policy, while highlighting the “insiders versus outsiders” chasm dividing Western democracies.
Mr Abbott, who lost the leadership to Mr Turnbull in September 2015, will also call for immigration levels to be cut to 110,000 people a year from 190,000, until migrants are able to properly integrate into the Australian way of life, and to help wages grow and make house prices more affordable.
All too often, it seems, the people charged with sorting out our difficulties don’t have to suffer them - TONY ABBOTT
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But it is his attack of Mr Turnbull and his “glib talk” that is the most cutting.
“All too often, it seems, the people charged with sorting out our difficulties don’t have to suffer them,” Mr Abbott will say in a prepared speech obtained by The Daily Telegraph.
“It’s easy to be relaxed about green-scheme-driven price hikes when you’re on a big salary. It’s easy to dismiss street crime when you live in an up-market suburb and don’t have to use public transport or drive long distances for work.
“Hence the insiders versus outsiders chasm now bedevilling the politics of the West: a talking class that’s never had it so good; a working class that’s trying harder and harder just to keep up; and a welfare class with a strong sense of entitlement.”
Mr Abbott also will attack the “insiders versus outsiders” mentality of Canberra.
“Australian politics is at a low ebb for many reasons but one is our tendency to tell other people how to do their jobs rather than to get on with our own,” he will say.
On energy prices, Mr Abbott says there is “something fundamentally wrong” when we have the world’s largest readily available reserves of coal, gas and uranium “yet has the world’s highest energy prices, when Australia has so much land yet property prices rival London and Hong Kong and when Australia has the world’s best-funded schools yet education results on par with Kazakhstan”.
“Our emissions obsession has made coal taboo, so policy makers pretend that a combination of wind and gas generation can keep the lights on and prices down even though most states are making further gas production almost impossible,” his speech reads.
And Mr Abbott has given Mr Turnbull some advice for winning an election against Labor leader Bill Shorten — cut the immigration rate until migrants are better integrated in Australian society.
“My main concern tonight is another topic, no less taboo, lest anyone be upset or comfort be given to the racists supposedly in our midst, namely the rate of immigration,” he will say. “It’s a basic law of economics that increasing the supply of labour depresses wages; and that increasing demand for housing boosts price.
“At least until infrastructure housing stock and integration has better caught up, we simply have to move the overall numbers substantially down. In order to win the next election, the government needs policy positions which are principled, practical and popular.”