ABC 7.30 report host Leigh Sales grilled Prime Minister Tony Abbott over fearmongering

7.30 host Leigh Sales turned the screws on Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott over his contradictory comments on fearmongering and scare campaigns.

PRIME Minister Tony Abbott has been forced to defend his contradictory comments over scare campaigns after he was accused of being Federal Parliament’s “worst offender”.

Recently Mr Abbott said that he wanted to have a “conversation with the nation and not a scare campaign” on the big issues.

In a prerecorded interview with ABC’s 7.30, host Leigh Sales took the Prime Minister to task over his comments regarding the carbon tax and Islamic State.

Ms Sales accused Mr Abbott of “fearmongering” and called him out over his so-called prediction that the South Australian city of Whyalla would be “wiped off the map” by the Gillard government’s Carbon Tax.

However the Liberal Party leader fired back, accusing Ms Sales of trying to elicit a “gotcha moment”.

“If I may say, and I am not going to deny you a gotcha moment, Leigh, but if I may say, the carbon tax did have a very destructive impact on all of those energy intensive centres like Gladstone, like Whyalla, like Geelong. And that’s why it’s so good that it’s gone.”

“But it didn’t wipe them off the map, Prime Minister,” Ms Sales shot back. “And it’s not a gotcha because I am trying to establish in the context of you saying we shouldn’t have scare campaigns, but in the past you have been somebody who has used scare campaigns.”

In response, Mr Abbott said he now thought it was important that politicians “try to be as good as we can” and to move forward.

7.30 host Leigh Sales.

But Ms Sales would not let up asking Mr Abbott if he thought his comment that Islamic State was “coming for every one of us” was fearmongering.

“It is exactly what Daesh or ISIL says it wants,” he replied. “It is every other day putting out messages to supporters and sympathisers in countries like Australia saying ‘go out and kill the unbelievers’ that’s what they say. That’s their objective. The whole of the caliphate is universal dominion - we need to be very conscious of the fact that this is exactly what they want to do.”

Ms Sales pointed out that there are only around 30,000 IS militants and questioned how all of them could be “coming for every one of us”.

“You ask the people who have been, or the relatives of those who have been crucified, beheaded, sexually enslaved, executed in their hundreds and thousands about their benevolence of this evil death cult,” Mr Abbott said. “That’s what it is, an evil death cult and the message of this death cult to everyone, anywhere, is to submit or die - that’s why it’s so important that it be resisted at home and abroad.”

Ms Sales then pointed out that US President Barack Obama had recently said it was important that people kept the IS threat in perspective and questioned whether calling it a death cult actually did that.

Mr Abbott replied that President Obama had also used the term as well.

He also defended Australia’s commitment to the fight against IS arguing that the 1000 combat troops the nation had sent to deal with the threat was the second-largest contingent.