Tony Abbott argues climate change could be ‘beneficial’ as politics of insanity takes hold in Australia

THE former PM’s latest claim is a sign we are into the politics of insanity, where it’s cool to be crazy, crazy to be sane and reality is what you want it to be.

Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott addresses the media. Picture: AAP / Jim Rice.

OPINION

GLOBAL warming is good for you, postal votes will kill you and the most trusted politician in Australia just spent a day chasing sheep through the streets of LA.

Welcome to the politics of insanity, where it’s cool to be crazy, crazy to be sane and reality is simply whatever you want it to be.

Tony Abbott’s latest contribution to national debate – arguing to an audience of climate sceptics that “a gradual lift in global temperatures…might even be beneficial” – is sad proof that the former PM has finally jumped the shark.

This is a great shame, because Abbott has never really been the buffoon his enemies on the left delight in painting him as, yet recently he seems devoted to proving them right in his quixotic crusade to God knows where.

It is a bit like watching a once-mighty bull thrashing about in the ring as it slowly bleeds out in front of a cheering crowd. The spectacle is unbecoming for all concerned.

Because what is happening to Tony Abbott isn’t just the result of his own mad zeal, but also a symptom of the madness that is creeping into politics the world over.

Of course madness in politics is nothing new – some might say it’s a prerequisite – but what is unprecedented is the suddenness with which it can now strike and then recede, only to strike again from the opposite direction.

In the seven decades since the end of World War 2, Western democracy has been extraordinarily stable and secure - probably more so than at any other time in history. The very fact that there were two World Wars in the three preceding decades and none since is evidence of this.

Government in the major powers typically swung between the centre-left and centre-right – indeed in Australia it was effectively the birth of the two-party system.

Many of these governments might have been disappointing, but few were disastrous. However in the US and the UK we now have governments which are respectively dysfunctional and impotent; groundbreaking upheaval in France and the first foray of right-wing nationalists into the German parliament since the fall of Hitler.

And in Australia, a system that has been so remarkably stable that not a single national government since World War 2 has not been elected to a second term in office, we have managed to destroy not one, but two prime ministers in their first term – an event that was unprecedented the first time and high farce by the second.

Indeed, the number of first-term knifings comes to three if you count Kevin Rudd’s comeback and may well be four if things keep going the way they are for Malcolm Turnbull. That will mean every single prime minister of Australia in 12 years goes to the guillotine before going back to the polls.

This is insanity, and insanity begets insanity.

There is a mock saying I am fond of quoting that I once found in a satirical calendar that was compiled by the best British comedians of the 1980s. It goes something like this:

“He who kills a man’s son, rapes his wife and buries his daughter alive in an anthill should not expect to sit at that man’s table… without the subject coming up.”

Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has argued climate change could be beneficial. Picture: AP / Rick Rycroft

Contrary to the howls of predictable outrage that would greet it now, it was not a joke about rape nor a joke about murder. It was a joke about consequences.

In the case of both Rudd and Abbott there was an extraordinary assumption on the part of their assassins that they could cut down both men at the height of their powers and they would recede without a fuss into the twilight and everything would return to normal.

In fact it set them both on an unstoppable path to vengeance. Which, quite frankly, is perfectly understandable.

That is where Abbott is at now, whether he even knows it or not. Indeed, it was all but inevitable that he would go down this path even if he didn’t want to – and, of course, as he promised not to.

Human beings rarely abide the laws of their party constitution or even the law of decency. They abide the laws of Shakespeare.

And so whether Abbott believes in climate change or doesn’t, or whether he thinks it’s a good thing or isn’t, is completely immaterial to what he is doing. Let’s not forget that as PM he professed to be so concerned about climate change he was taking “direct action” against it. Climate change is merely a weapon in his ongoing war with Turnbull, and the first rule of war is to use all available weapons.

In fact the parallels are uncanny with Rudd’s sudden Road to Damascus conversion to support for same sex marriage just before he retook the prime ministership from Julia Gillard, who then still opposed it much to the confusion of her left-wing acolytes. It is almost inconceivable to think that that was just four years ago.

Nor are these convenient “truths” solely the domain of former PMs or the right, as the increasingly absurd campaign around same sex marriage has proven.

Nationals senator Matt Canavan became the most hated man in Australia on Monday night when he fell victim to a horrendous mangling of the facts on marriage equality and suicide that was left shamefully uncorrected by the flagship ABC show Q&A.

Canavan, whose citizenship status is currently what one might call bi-curious, had been struggling to point out a naïve but egregious error in the now-infamous email sent to Westpac employees that claimed voting Yes in the postal survey would prevent 3,000 suicides a year.

In fact, information released just last month by Mindframe, the official government body on reporting of suicides, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, showed that the total number of suicides in Australia among all people averaged just under 2,800 a year in the five years spanning 2012 to 2016.

In other words, a Yes vote would singlehandedly miraculously prevent even more suicides than currently occur nationwide for every single reason under the sun.

The Westpac email appeared to garble a previous report which referred to suicide ATTEMPTS, an astronomically different number. Moreover it was a mistake for which the bank had already apologised days before Q&A went to air and was widely reported and yet no one on the panel appeared to know the difference, nor came to Canavan’s defence as he was crucified on the show and online simply for trying to make this clarification.

Indeed, many supposedly learned panellists and online commentators appeared to believe that the 2,800 suicide statistic Canavan mentioned referred to gay people alone and that he was downplaying it, thus creating the cyclone of outrage that encircled him. This horrendously cruel and false assertion was allowed to go unchecked on the national broadcaster and that is a disgrace – and I say that both as a supporter of the ABC and as a proud Yes voter.

And so even when it comes to debates as dangerous and vital as the end of the world or people ending their own lives the truth has well and truly fled the battlefield. In a more civilised age you might pick your ideology and then pick the facts to suit it but now even selective facts don’t matter anymore. We are entering a world in which people just make sh*t up and hope that enough people are dumb enough to believe it.

And the worst part is they do. Fake news has been unknowingly embraced by the left and the right and will always be embraced as long as people choose simple ideology over complex truths. And now it can spread faster and wider than ever before.

That’s why we’ve got Trump and Brexit and once stable governments the world over now hanging by a thread. That’s why climate change conspiracies flourish and online lynch mobs crush reasoned debate. The phenomenal human genius that created the world wide web merely opened the floodgates to a tsunami of propaganda and porn. The madness is upon us.

And to think they once called it the information age.