Tim Blair: Anti-Tony Abbott factions are multiplying

It’s the best of times and the worst of times for certain malcontents in one of the nation’s wealthiest electorates, where anti-Tony Abbott factions are multiplying.

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If you were born in Australia, you’ve basically won life’s lottery at the first attempt. If you end up living somewhere beautiful and affluent like the Sydney electorate of Warringah, you’ve compounded that advantage.

And if you bought a house in Warringah a decade or so ago, then consider yourself one of the most fortunate people to ever have lived on this earth.

House values in Warringah soared during the recent property boom to the point where last year the median price was north of $2 million. In some Warringah suburbs, the median is nudging towards $4 million.

By any objective measure, then, Warringah folk have basically nothing at all to complain about. But complain they do. At least some of them.

Artwork Terry Pontikos.

According to a weekend Sydney Morning Herald piece by Jane Cadzow, there are so many pocket-sized pods of Warringah residents opposed to long-time local member Tony Abbott that last November saw the inaugural meeting of the Coalition of Anti-Abbott Groups.

These include People of Warringah, Let’s Not Re-elect Tony Abbott, Think Twice Warringah, Warringah19, the North Shore Environmental Stewards, Voices of Warringah and Out With Abbott.

You’d likely find fewer factions along the Gaza Strip.

“There were about 30 people in the room,” Daniel Moller, founder of Think Twice Warringah, told Cadzow of that first momentous Coalition of Anti-Abbott Groups meeting.

“We were from different walks of life, different age groups and different political backgrounds but we were united behind this one goal: to get rid of the man.”

Mr Abbott during a debate with independent candidate for Warringah Zali Steggall. Picture: Monique Harmer

Apparently they’re upset that Abbott once ate a raw onion, among other trivialities. And many of them evidently believe the climate is determined by whoever represents a 68sq km area of Sydney’s northern beaches. Just about every independent running against Abbott cites climate change as a priority.

If you want to impress those 30 or so members of the Coalition of Anti-Abbott Groups, you’ve got to talk a good climate game. “I want to beat Tony Abbott, who has been a handbrake on Australian progress on many fronts but, particularly, effective action on climate change,” former Olympian Zali Steggall said, announcing her bid in January.

Thus continues the great madness of our time. Australian climate change activists carry on as though the rest of the planet doesn’t exist.

For example, China last year was building so many new coal-fired power plants that their total generation capacity will be greater than that of every existing coal plant in the US combined.

The capacity of those new Chinese plants alone is estimated to be around 259GW. By comparison, the total in Australia of all forms of power generation is just 50GW. Do whatever you want, Warringah. China doesn’t know who you are.

A protester dressed to resemble Warringah MP Tony Abbott during an International Women's Day protest. Picture: AFP

When people don’t have problems, they invent them. Or, in the case of climate change, import them. Warringah’s malcontents are exhibiting an apparently universal human need to complain.

Scientists are probably only a few years away from identifying the “whinge gene”. They might have found it already if their research focused on the northern beaches. Or if they took a few tissue samples from people shrieking over the demolition of Allianz Stadium.

Seriously, the fate of that old joint is now dominating the NSW state election campaign, even though replacing Allianz with something up-to-date and inhabitable represents barely 2 per cent of the Coalition government’s infrastructure spending over the next four years.

The Greens even vowed last week to send in a human chain protecting the stadium from destruction. And they’ll probably do it, because the Greens never seem to have a problem whipping up a bunch of protesters on work days. Strange, that.

Anyway, none of us is immune from suffering profound first-world problems. Drop by my place of an evening and I’ll usually be just a couple of drinks away from a 30-minute rant about how modern Formula One cars are ugly, over-engineered and sonically hideous.

Needless to say, these issues are not exactly priorities for someone ­living in sub-Saharan Africa.

US comedian Louis CK once unloaded on “the crappiest generation of spoiled idiots that don’t care”. He essentially described just about all of us.

“I was on an airplane and there was high-speed internet. That’s the newest thing that I know exists,” CK elaborated, back in 2011.

“It’s amazing. Then it breaks down and they apologise, the internet’s not working. And they guy next to me goes: ‘This is bullshit.’ Like, how quickly the world owes him something that he first knew existed only 10 seconds ago.”

Just a theory, and an untestable one at that, but if you hauled a disease-ridden illiterate peasant out of his reeking, rodent-infested 17th-century London slum and landed him in Neutral Bay, you would probably get from him maybe 48 hours of pure gratitude.

He’d marvel at the luxuries and comforts of the modern world. He’d be delighted at having his rickets cured. A hot shower with actual soap would be revelatory. And he’d be positively ecstatic over the food, which he wouldn’t have to fight any rats to obtain.

And then, just a couple of days later, he’d complain about poor mobile phone reception along the Manly Corso. Guaranteed.

If he fell into the wrong crowd, our time-travelling peasant pal might even end up running as an independent against Tony Abbott.