“You know, if there is one lesson to be learnt from the fate of the former government in Canberra, maybe even from the fate of the former government in Victoria, is you do not change leaders,” Abbott told 3AW on Thursday.
“You rally behind someone and you stick to the plan and we’ve got a good plan.”
The Guardian 22nd January, 2014
Now why does this sound familiar? Oh that’s right!
Still let’s be fair. The attempts to make Medicare more affordable by making us pay more doesn’t seem so bad when compared to Baldric’s solution for the low ceiling.
“We’ve decided that we can’t afford Medicare, so you can pay for it, because we don’t want to raise taxes. Unless it’s the GST, we need to review that and possibly just charge it on a few more luxury items like food, which isn’t raising it, it’s just spreading it wider and when you spread things wider than don’t get higher!”
But I did like this bit in The Guardian:
The Coalition’s Senate leader, Eric Abetz, acknowledged the government needed “to re-engage with the Australian people”, but he defended Abbott against criticism from “maybe one or two” Coalition members who were backgrounding journalists.
“They’re always so very brave when they don’t have to give their name,” Abetz said.
“This sort of backgrounding, if it is occurring – it’s just people who aren’t willing to put their names to it, or in fact stories that are sort of half concocted … and it’s amazing how the lowliest backbencher all of a sudden becomes a ‘senior Liberal’ in stories such as this.”
Abetz said he was receiving feedback from Coalition colleagues that they were “committed to the course the government has set”.
“Is it a difficult course? Yes, it is,” Abetz said.
“In a democracy no government deliberately sets about making these sort of decisions that they know that the population instinctively doesn’t like, but I also think instinctively they understand that they are the correct decisions for the future.”
Yep, those Liberals are big on instinct. Just like when Howard said that he instinctively doubted climate change. “Think? We don’t need to think, we have our instincts, and it’s much better to trust them than scientists who waste their time on rational arguments.”
Of course, we also get an insight into the way Senator Abetz feels about us all when he refers to the “lowliest backbencher”! If a Liberal backbencher is only “lowly” who shouldn’t be listen to, what about a member of the general public? As for someoen without a job… Well!
But it’s good to see that – after all the background briefings that “senior Labor figures” gave the media during the Gillard years – that Senator Abetz seems to doubt that these background briefings are newsworthy, because we don’t even know that they’re true. “This sort of backgrounding, if it is occurring…”
Is he suggesting that the media could be making things up? I just know that it wouldn’t be true.
Instinctively!
