Andrew Bolt: Why Tony Abbott is so important to the Liberal Party
Tony Abbott is a hunted man, under savage attack because he holds the most important seat in this election. And it’s because his enemies know how drastically a topple in Waringah will change Australia, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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No wonder Tony Abbott feels hunted. The former prime minister is under savage attack because he holds the most important seat in this election.
So much will change if Abbott loses Warringah on Saturday to global-warming extremist Zali Steggall, the former skiing champion.
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Global warming will become our dominant religion, the power of militant activists will soar, Liberal conservatives will be cowed and, given the swing needed, the Liberals will have lost the election.
The country will change. The Liberals will change.
That is why no other seat has seen such a manic attack on the sitting Liberal member.
GetUp!, the cult-like far-Left activist group backed by radical unions, claims to have poured 600 members into the campaign against Abbott and has run savage ads mocking his service as a lifesaver.
A polling company co-owned by the ACTU and the militant CFMMEU union has conducted what sounds like a push-poll on refugees to influence Warringah voters.
Other activists groups, including the Australian Conservation Foundation, have also pitched in.
Some unknown activists even plastered the area with posters of Abbott’s face with the “c” word on his forehead.
Meanwhile, Sydney Morning Herald journalists openly barrack for Steggall. More seriously, so does the ABC, the allegedly impartial national broadcaster.
The ABC’s hatred of Abbott — who as prime minister cut its budget and axed the carbon tax — is overwhelming.
ABC political editor Andrew Probyn even described Abbott in a news report, as a matter of fact, as “the most destructive politician of his generation” for opposing the global-warming “theology”.
Now comes Abbott’s punishment. The ABC has given Steggall uniformly friendly interviews and profiles, including a report for its flagship 7.30 show that hailed the “44-year-old barrister and mum” as “exactly the kind of candidate local groups have been searching for”.
In fact, the 7.30 journalist responsible was so embedded in Steggall’s campaign that he drove with her to the press conference where she announced she would run against Abbott.
Now the ABC’s Four Corners is spending a lot of time on the Steggall campaign for a documentary on, obviously, how she beat Abbott. The ABC seems heavily invested in a Steggall win.
But the ABC’s bias extends to how it presents Steggall — endorsing her claim to be basically a Liberal voter angry that the Liberals haven’t done more about global warming.
Even the ABC’s admirable psephologist, Antony Green, has bought this spin, declaring she “has Liberal credentials, conservative credentials”.
In fact, Steggall has admitted she’d never voted for the Liberals federally and her ex-husband told The Daily Telegraph she was “always a Greens voter”.
Greens campaigners in Warringah have even handed out Steggall’s how-to-vote cards. No surprise, since her global-warming policies are more extreme than even Labor’s.
I have never seen activist groups and the media run such a ferocious campaign to destroy a Liberal candidate.
What is behind it?
Above all, Abbott’s enemies know Abbott’s fall will change Australia.
GetUp!, particularly, will boast that it brought him down. More Liberal politicians will thencow before its agenda, its $12 million budget and its orange-shirted army.
The media Left, especially the ABC, will be emboldened, too, and will interpret Abbott’s defeat as proof that politicians who question global-warming policies are unelectable.
The Liberals, already dangerously timid, are likely to cave. Even under Scott Morrison, they do not dare tell the truth about global warming — that the scare is grossly exaggerated and nothing Australia does can change the climate.
If Abbott falls, the Liberals are likely to conclude that even questioning the colossal cost of Labor’s global warming plans or defending our coal-fired power stations is electoral poison. The warmists would win a total victory, while your electricity bills soar.
And, of course, Abbott’s loss would strip the Liberals of their most potent conservative warrior and one of the three contenders for leader if the Liberals lose.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has done a good job as leader so far and energetic Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is another contender.
But Abbott is the most conservative of the three, the one with the most cut-through and the only one who as leader beat Labor in an election.
He is also the only likely leader who could take on the global warming hysteria that is devastating the Liberals.
That’s why the activist industry has concluded Tony Abbott must be terminated.
And that’s why it is so important to conservatives that Abbott triumphs, to snap the power of GetUp! and stare down the warmist scare.
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