The Leader of the Opposition in the Australian Parliament, Tony Abbot, has labelled the Gillard Government, “the worst government ever”. By any objective test this is not true. What is true, is that the current opposition is demonstratively one of the worst ever.
While the Gillard Government, despite its minority status, has managed to successfully negotiate its way through a massive amount of legislation and skilfully guided our economy through the international financial crisis, Tony Abbott and his team have failed to show that they are capable of taking the reins of government.
From day one Mr Abbott has put all of his efforts into a destructive personal quest to bring about the downfall of the Gillard Government with little thought being put into being prepared to take the reins of government if he were to succeed.
It is very lucky for the Australian nation that Abbott has so far failed to totally destabilise the Government, because the Liberal Opposition have no credible policies on which to base its own governance of the nation and there remains a policy vacuum in most areas.
In particular the Liberal budget is of great concern and appears to have been cobbled together without reference to the spending promises made by Mr Abbott.
The Liberal climate change policy reflects their disregard for the scientific position on global warming impacts. It is blatantly irresponsible and extremely costly both in its direct cost, and because it has not been seriously considered, it would fail to be effective and in doing so would add to the growing ecological and human cost that is already unfolding.
Clearly either Abbott’s budget is a bogus document or he has no intention of implementing most of his policies requiring expenditure. Either way, in the private commercial world this would amount to the commission of a fraud on the Australian public and would put him in jail.
What is difficult to explain is how the Liberals have escaped serious media scrutiny. This lack of scrutiny represents a massive failure across the media spectrum as Abbott has been a hairs breadth away from seizing power since the last election.
If he had succeeded we would have been in deep trouble when he implemented his threadbare un-costed programs. Alternatively, if he faced reality we would have felt cheated that he was reneging on his promises. Either way Tony Abbott’s constant self serving attempts at destabilisation of the Government shows a dangerous disregard for the Australian people that is only matched by our smug and indolent media.
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