Federal election 2016: Opinion - Will Tony Abbott do a Kevin Rudd?
WILL former Prime Minister Tony Abbott cause the kind of destructive mayhem for Malcolm Turnbull’s election campaign as Kevin Rudd did for Julia Gillard in 2010?
Analysis
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WHEN news directors and producers line up the events to watch each day there will some resources allotted to keeping an eye on Tony Abbott.
Will the former Prime Minister cause the kind of destructive mayhem for Malcolm Turnbull’s election campaign as Kevin Rudd did for Julia Gillard in 2010 when he directly or indirectly leaked against his successor ensuring her trustworthiness and strength was undermined?
So far, Abbott has played a straight bat which suggests he’s either putting the pain of September last year behind him or he’s parking it for a later time.
He has been impeccable so far not to put a word out of place either during some brief campaigning in Queensland last week or at his own launch for re-election as the Member for Warringah at the weekend.
Abbott was, using his own scale of wariness towards the sitting PM, quite cuddly towards Turnbull.
He spoke of his legacy also being “Malcolm Turnbull’s legacy” and urging voters to “re-elect the Coalition Government”.
During an interview on Sky News on Sunday, Abbott repeated his previous statement that he did not think the Liberal Party would return to him as a leader in the future.
“It will be a tremendous honour to be the member for Warringah. I’m not asking for any other position, I don’t expect any other position,” he said during the Sky interview.
Abbott language has changed a little from the time before the election was announced.
Previously, Abbott had resisted using Turnbull’s name, referring only to “the Prime Minister” and he also stopped short at saying a Turnbull election would be a re-election, preferring to just say he wanted the Coalition “elected”, pointing to a failure to acknowledge any connection between the two.
This is the kind of parsing we politics Kremlinologists engage in but they do matter because we’ve learnt during lengthy study the politicians choose their words carefully and deliberately.
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Originally published as Federal election 2016: Opinion - Will Tony Abbott do a Kevin Rudd?
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