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Abbott Hobbles Turnbull and Exposes Him as a Lying Fraud
by suzie Friday, Sep 25 2015, 9:39pm
international / prose / post

In a not so subtle, but subtle enough attack on sleazy, smooth-talker Malcolm Turnbull, vanquished former PM Tony Abbott confirmed that nothing will change for the long suffering Australian people under Turnbull.

Personally, I wouldn’t have imagined that Abbott was up to it, subtlety that is, but treachery for sure. By stating publicly in The Weekend Australian that Turnbull has maintained ALL his (Abbott’s) unfair policies favouring the corporate elite and oppressing average working Aussies, students/youth, pensioners and the vulnerable, Abbott has effectively exposed the emperor as having no clothes; the text clearly indicates that Turnbull favours the same elite, big end of town that Abbott was happy to serve to the great cost of the Australian people – so don’t hold your breath Australia waiting for financial relief, simply nail Turnbull as full of shit.

Article below – all emphases and brackets mine:

Tony Abbott: my legacy the key to victory at next election
by Dennis Shanahan and Paul Kelly

Tony Abbott has declared that it is “absolutely” in the national interest that this Coalition government and Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister be re-elected — and that his two-year leadership provided a “strong foundation” for electoral victory next year.

The former prime minister, who is remaining in parliament for the time being, has defended the “achievements” of his leadership and the economic gains made under Joe Hockey as ­treasurer.

In his first in-depth interview since his removal as prime minister 13 days ago, Mr Abbott told The Weekend Australian he was not going to set himself up as a rival to the new Prime Minister by talking about his election plans.

But he added: “What we have given the new Prime Minister and the new Treasurer is a very strong foundation.” [Indeed, Turnbull and Morrison have not veered from elite serving policies one iota.]

Mr Abbott said he believed he had laid a solid foundation [by disadvantaging the majority of Australians and favouring corporate/banker elites] for the Coalition’s re-election. “Whatever else the changes of last week were about, they plainly weren’t about policy,” [there you have it!] he said in his new backbencher’s office in Parliament House.

He emphasised that no one had raised policy changes with him during the leadership challenge. “The fact that the new Prime Minister and the new Treas­urer are saying exactly the same thing today that the former prime minister and former treas­urer were saying only a fortnight ago shows that we got it right,” Mr Abbott said.

“Interestingly, just as nothing has changed on economic policy in the last fortnight, nothing’s changed on climate change policy in the last fortnight, nothing’s changed in respect of same-sex marriage in the last fortnight and nothing’s changed in respect of border protection in the last fortnight, and I don’t imagine anything will change in national security policy more broadly.”

Before the leadership ballot two weeks ago, Mr Turnbull delivered a withering attack against Mr Abbott for lacking “economic leadership” and he promised to restore­ confidence in business and the economy.

Bill Shorten has since accused the Liberals of changing leaders because of poor polling and only changing “style not substance”.

Yesterday the Opposition Leader said: “The only thing that has changed is that Malcolm ­Turnbull, in order to capture the Liberal Party and replace Mr ­Abbott, has had to sign up to a dirty deal to implement Tony Abbott’s failed policies.”

In his new office — next to forme­r Speaker Bronwyn Bishop’s and crowded with his favourite art and political objects, including a portrait of Robert Menzies and a bust of Winston Churchill — Mr Abbott admitted feeling bruised by the leadership removal but called for stability in politics and less poll-driven, short-term debate.

“It is absolutely in our interest as a nation and certainly in our interest­ as a Coalition that this Prime Minister get re-elected,” he said. “So having had five prime ministers in five years we can’t find ourselves in the appalling situation of having six prime ministers in the last six years. That really would be out-Greecing Greece.”

Mr Abbott said his government delivered solid achievements but received little credit, with criticism directed at how decisions were made, rather than the outcome.

“Obviously we stopped the boats, a really important achievement,” he said. “We got rid of Labor’s bad taxes, a really important achievement. We’ve kick-started a lot of ­infrastructure, the biggest infrastructure spend in the commonwealth’s history including the Badgerys Creek airport about which governments have procrastinated about for many, many years.

“Plainly, the three free-trade agreements are incredibly important and I believe they will set up the country for the long term. And the trade union royal commission is doing an outstanding job.

“It was a government that didn’t get the credit it deserved but nevertheless it was a government that got on with things with an eye for the future.”

Mr Abbott said part of the problem for his government was that “we had an obdurate Labor Party, a feckless Senate, we had a very difficult media culture, in which we had to operate”.

“I’m not complaining — this is the world in which we live — but many people had a tendency to say ‘they did the right thing the wrong way’ rather than say ‘they did the right thing’,” he said.

Mr Abbott said last year’s “horror” budget, which caused a collapse in the polls from which he and the Coalition didn’t recover and allowed Labor to have a lead in 30 Newspoll surveys in a row, was a case of not being given credit.

“You can always dispute the marketing ... but the 2014 budget was a very serious structural attemp­t to tackle our long-term spending problems,” he said.

Mr Abbott defended the unpopular measures in last year’s budget, including university reforms­, restrictions on the dole for school-leavers, reducing pension payments over the long term, ending business welfare, the Medicare co-payment and not implementing unfunded Labor promises on public­ school and hospital funding as economically responsible and morally right decisions.

“Having said all of that about the 2014 budget, the government was braver than the parliament and the fact is we did get $50 billion worth of savings out of the [pockets of those least able to afford it] budget over the forward estimates,” he said. “We improved the fiscal position by about half a percentage point [by robbing the poor and vulnerable to give to the rich] of GDP in all of the out years.

“We were serious because we took very big political risks [callous, socially UNFAIR policies] to bring cuts about. [While allowing multi-national tax avoiders, large companies and banks a FREE ride.]

“In the end, what counts is what the government decides not how it arrives at the decision. I think from all participants in the national conversation there has been an obsession with the trivial rather than the substantial and the long-term.”

http://tinyurl.com/qcgu876