Tim Blair: Yes, it’s all Tony Abbott’s fault
RIDICULOUS leftists are quick to blame Tony Abbott for everything — even being headbutted. So, it’s time to admit that yes... it’s ALL Tony’s fault, writes Tim Blair.
Opinion
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Last December I was scheduled to join a bunch of politicians and journalists in Jerusalem on an evening tour of ancient tunnels beneath the Old City.
When I came down from my room at the King David, however, I found all of my would-be tour pals not boarding buses but instead hunkered down in the bar.
“It’s been cancelled,” Warren Mundine explained. “The Old City is under lockdown. Security told us not to leave the hotel.”
When Israelis tell you something might be up, it pays to listen. Lord only knows what information they’d received but later that same night a Turkish cop murdered Russian ambassador Andrey Karlov in Ankara, subsequently shouting “Allahu akbar” until he was removed from the pulse-equipped community.
Then an asylum seeker drove a truck through a market crowd in Berlin, killing 12 people.
Everyone in the bar that evening was inclined to blame Islamic State and their freelance operatives for these atrocities. This may have been due to fact that everyone was more or less sensible, although less so as our confinement continued. A few among us were inclined to the left, but not irrationally so.
If crazier leftists had been present, they’d have known who was at fault. The insane left routinely blames Tony Abbott for everything bad, even when bad things happen to Tony Abbott. The former Prime Minister’s presence in Jerusalem on that trip would have sealed the deal.
The Left’s identification of Abbott as the epicentre of all evil began during his time as opposition leader.
In 2012, when Labor’s tactically ruinous decision to install Peter Slipper as House speaker backfired, current Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek offered Lateline this considered analysis:
“I think it is right that Mr Slipper has taken responsibility. He’s apologised for the language and he’s tendered his resignation and it shows two things. It shows that he has respect for the institution of the Parliament and it shows that he knows that the language that he has used is wrong and should not have been used.
TIM BLAIR: ALLEGED ABBOTT ATTACKER CHARGED
“And I think it raises the question about the role that Tony Abbott’s playing.”
It sure … didn’t. Yet five years later, with Abbott now a backbencher, he’s still the Left’s go-to guy for things gone wrong. On last week’s Q & A, for example, Labor’s Penny Wong held Abbott responsible for the present power crisis.
“Regrettably, you know, I was the climate minister when we were unable to get agreement through the Parliament,” said Wong, who was at least right about that regret.
“That’s almost 10 years ago now. And the cost of that to the community has been less investment in supply — dispatchable — and that means higher prices. So, if we’re going to resolve this, what we have to do is to set aside some of the wars that we have seen over the last decade, which really started when Tony Abbott tore down Malcolm Turnbull in 2009.”
For the Left, when it comes to any sin, any wrongdoing, any negative outcome, all roads lead to Tone. On the same stupid show, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young launched into one of her trademark anti-coal tantrums, ending with the line: “And the only reason it’s happening is because Tony Abbott …”
And so to last week, when Abbott was headbutted by a Hobart man — an assault twice as dangerous in Tasmania than it is on the mainland. Surely in this case Abbott could not possibly be held responsible. Surely the blame lay entirely with the nose-pierced chap who made it clear in interviews he’d held “a lifelong ambition to headbutt a fascist” — or, in the absence of one, the member for Warringah.
Surely they couldn’t pin this on Abbott, right? Wrong! Writing for The New Daily, Paula Matthewson declared: “Tony Abbott didn’t deserve to be assaulted — because no one ever deserves violence — (but) he is at least partially responsible for what happened.
“That’s because Mr Abbott helped to create the hyper-partisan and aggressive political environment that we have today; an environment that encouraged his assailant to think it was OK to physically hurt the former prime minister of Australia.”
This line of argument is identical to blaming a sexual assault victim for wearing a short skirt, behaving flirtatiously or drinking too much; creating an environment, as Matthewson might put it, that encouraged her assailant to “think it was OK”.
“These days, political aggression seems to have infiltrated our everyday lives. We see it too often in the hostile treatment of minorities on the street and on public transport, the hate-speech that is amplified through talkback radio and tabloid television, and the abuse that masquerades as comments on Twitter and Facebook,” Matthewson continued.
“How did we get to this point? Well, with a great deal of assistance from Mr Abbott.”
So now he’s to blame for social media trolls. Who knew Abbott had so much power over the thoughts of cranky online leftists? Just how easily played are these people?
Following the Hobart attack, loss-making hobby publication The Saturday Paper presented the Left’s ultimate position on Abbott and anybody like him. “There is no real place,” its latest editorial decided, “for a person such as Abbott in contemporary society.”
Interestingly, precisely the same view is held by a certain Tasmanian who’ll be facing court next month. The blame-Abbott crowd really ought to start blaming themselves.
NK attack would be a ‘suicide mission’
The shortest known elapsed time is the instant between someone famous dying and ex-Fairfax columnist Mike Carlton tweeting he knew the person. He’s got it down to the sub-nanosecond range. But if North Korea continues on its quest for absolute annihilation, quick-fire Mike might soon have some competition.
The gap between a North Korean attack on the US or an allied nation and the subsequent American response would likely be so tiny as to be immeasurable.
The North Koreans are assisting this outcome by assuring the US is amply prepared for a counter-attack — or even a pre-emptive attack, should one be judged necessary. At every step, Kim Jong-un and his men of hench are talking up what US president accurately called last week their “suicide mission”.
“Trump might not have been aware what is uttered from his mouth, but we will make sure that he bears consequences far beyond his words, far beyond the scope of what he can handle, even if he is ready to do so,” the North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong-ho babbled at the UN on the weekend, in response to Trump’s first-ever UN speech.
“He committed an irreversible mistake of making our rockets’ visit to the entire US mainland inevitable.”
Inevitable, you say? This sounds very close to an outright declaration of war — certainly close enough to warrant intensification of US attention on Pyongyang, or the area potentially soon to be known as “where Pyongyang used to be”.
“We will take preventive measures by merciless pre-emptive action in case the US and its vassal forces show any sign of conducting a kind of decapitating operation on our headquarters or military attack against our country,” Ri continued, adding that Trump was “mentally deranged”, “evil” and an “old gambler” who had turned the UN into a “gangster den”.
If he has, so much the better.
Although the difference would be hard to detect. The Wall Street Journal recently sent some reporters to North Korea, and over the weekend posted raw video from the trip.
It confirmed at least one thing: besides its leader, North Korea is not suffering any kind of obesity crisis. Also, smiles are not exactly commonplace, which is understandable when your future Facebook status is “irradiated”.
Anyway, in news from another besieged, backwards and fearful culture, the Adelaide Crows will play in this Saturday’s AFL grand final. Unlike North Korea, the Crows are favourites to win.
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