As I watched Abbott, my nemesis, get torn down by his own side I was literally clapping. I slept better than I had in a long time on Monday night knowing that I would wake up living in a country without Abbott as Prime Minister. Knowing that I would never have to hear the words ‘Prime Minister Tony Abbott’ ever again still makes me grin. But I must admit, as much as I hated Abbott, I also loved him too. I’m not claiming to some masochist love-hate fixation with the man who I literally hated in 200 blog posts over the last four years. The hate bit is obvious. But the love bit is more complex. I love Tony Abbott because he did what progressive have never been able to do for ourselves: he united us. I’m now hoping we can bottle that unity.

We know what we’re against: we’re against everything Tony Abbott is for. Let’s hold onto that. Let’s bottle that and never let someone like Tony Abbott run this country ever again. If we can do that, Tony Abbott’s legacy will be a gift to progressive Australians. Because a united progressive movement in Australia will never elect a conservative government ever again. We will never lose another election. What’s not to love about that?

The key to seeing the importance of the hatred of Tony Abbott in every pocket and corner of Australia is understanding that people like me and probably you, think far more deeply and regularly about politics than 99% of voters. When Abbott was elected Prime Minister, we knew him far better than the rest of the country. I remember the sense of dread at what was in store for us when I saw Abbott’s first cabinet assembled together for a photograph. Every one of the team was a wrecker. It wasn’t just Abbott of course. Turnbull was there too. Each and every Liberal and National MP elected to govern our country is equally responsible, and to blame, for every single thing the Abbott government did, or tried and failed to do. The rest of the country, who hadn’t been paying attention like we had, thankfully didn’t take long to catch up and to recognise who the Abbott government really was.

Abbott’s first budget, to politically informed progressives, was a predictable nightmare. To those who share progressive values, but who perhaps don’t think enough about politics to even realise they have progressive values, only had to look at the policies presented in their stark reality to understand that Abbott’s government didn’t fit with their sense of what was ‘right’. It didn’t fit with Australian values. Their policies just weren’t fair. To put it simply, Abbott’s government has done progressives the favour of widening our movement to voters who never realised they were progressives until they hated Abbott.

I’ve seen many commentators talking about all the mistakes Abbott made which led him to losing his job after becoming a national joke and the most hated Prime Minister in Australia’s history. A two year blip. Sure, it was humiliating and frustrating when Abbott gave Prince Philip a knighthood, when he promised to shirt-front Putin, when he ate an onion and pretty much made everyone cringe on a daily basis with his obvious stupidity and awkward sloganeering. But those things on their own didn’t make him hated. If he was a positive, inspirational leader who hadn’t wrecked the economy, who hadn’t lied about his plans and then went about stripping funding from education, health and welfare, who wasn’t an obvious misogynist, who hadn’t waged culture wars on the Human Rights Commission, on wind farms, on the ABC and SBS, who hadn’t shut down the car manufacturing industry and spent most of his energy trying to scare voters into believing there were ISIS bogey-men under the bed through an ever growing collection of flags, all the awkward, sometimes creepy stuff would be an aside. It might even be weirdly endearing, if Abbott was a good PM. What Abbott did, which progressives need to acknowledge as a good thing, is to reveal what politicians with conservative values will do to the country given half the chance. Every single policy that Abbott produced in his first budget was a policy that he, and everyone else in his government, including Turnbull, have spent their entire political careers waiting to introduce and would introduce again given the opportunity.

Many commentators also say Abbott’s problems were bad communication skills, a lack of a narrative, an over-reliance on slogans. But they are wrong about this. It’s far simpler than that. Abbott’s policies were rejected because Australians in the majority did not like them. Abbott might have done a great job of covering up his conservative, neoliberal values whilst in opposition and the lazy, inept mainstream media was his accomplice in this game. But the blunt, uncharismatic, unintelligent, unsubtle Abbott couldn’t keep the game up for even a day once in power and that’s why everything unravelled for him so quickly. He showed who he and his colleagues really were, and then there was nowhere to hide.

So by loving Abbott for this outcome, what can progressives learn? We can learn that Australia doesn’t want a conservative government, even if it comes dressed up in a shiny, expensive Malcolm Turnbull suit. We can learn that progressives can unite and make things happen. Whether they vote Labor, Green or even accidentally voted for Abbott, if they hated Abbott, they have progressive values and so they need to be reminded they will hate Turnbull too. We Marched in March, we ranted on Twitter, we shared on Facebook, we wrote and liked Open Letters, we grew the Independent Media, and we collectively hated Abbott. So let’s bottle this hatred and make it something positive. Let’s make sure Australia never elects a conservative neoliberal wrecker of a government ever again.

Is the Abbott government bored or panicked? It’s hard to tell.

Here’s the case for bored: they’ve done everything they promised to do and they hate the idea of a government who actually does stuff so they’ve got no idea what to actually do. There’s nothing on the agenda. Literally. In my professional experience, when you have a committee that meets regularly and gets to a point where there’s nothing on the agenda, there is usually a consensus acceptance that the committee has run its course and can be disbanded. What’s the point of meetings without agendas? That’s what the Abbott government is finding their whole government has become. A meeting without an agenda. When they were elected, they promised to ditch the Carbon Price, axe the mining tax and stop the boats. And presumably, having done all of this (well, if you count stopping the boats as just not telling us about the boats), they’re now devoid of a purpose.

Of course there is no narrative, because there are no ideas. Stories don’t exist without at least a ‘once upon a time…’. And there sure isn’t a ‘…happily live ever after’ with these morons in charge. They don’t want to reform, they just want to wreck. Much of their wrecking is being blocked, thank fully, by the Senate, so the wrecking ball hangs idle and there’s no future plans going into or coming out of Credlin’s office. A small, ineffectual government is boring. Being in government when you don’t actually like the idea of government is sort of like having a car but not having any interest in learning to drive it. You can sit in it in your driveway, you can wash it and admire it and use it to make yourself feel good about yourself. But you can’t do anything with it. It’s boring.

Hence why this week Dutton, ex-policeman and current-potato-head was presumably responsible for the latest farce: Border Farce. The scare machine has got boring; no one cares about the ‘death cult’ anymore and the promises to bomb Syria are not having the desired effect of persuading Australians to back a war. Wars are a good way to pass the time in government, and to whip up fear, but when the electorate is just ‘meh’ about the whole thing, it’s no wonder Dutton and Abbott are keen to flick the idea around of perhaps having a civil war. Checking visas in the street is a good way to divide the masses into those who belong in Team Australia and those who don’t. It’s just a game to these crazy cats.

So, like a child who has many books, but hasn’t learned to read them, who has the attention span of a flea and has smashed up all their toys so they don’t work anymore, the Abbott government is so bored they’re playing games, fighting amongst themselves and are taking expensive helicopter rides to party fundraisers because, frankly, they have nothing better to do.

Here’s the case for panicked: the Canning by-election polls. People’s jobs are on the line. Not just jobs, obviously, but salaries and, shock horror, entitlements. The panic must be worsening every time they see another poll, and they realise that the Canning by-election swing, if played out across the country, puts many of them in the unemployment queue come the next election. That’s when it becomes every blue-tie-wearing man (and a few women) for themselves. That’s when Joe Hockey decides he’s interested in the Republic Movement for its two advantages of being a potential poll boost for him personally, and to differentiate him against Monarchist Abbott. Panicked is when there are slogans without policies and they can’t even get the three words in the right order (Jobs and Growth, Growth and Jobs, Jobs and Jobs, Growth and Growth, Green Eggs and Ham, I do not like them here or there, I do not like them anywhere). Panic is when talking points reminding people not to leak are immediately leaked, and then there are leaks about the displeasure Abbott has had in learning of leaks. Leaking from every pore is a sure sign that the government is a dysfunctional, disunited, chaotic train wreck. That’s what they said about Labor wasn’t it? That’s what they are. They don’t care about the economy, they don’t care about people out there in their electorates losing their jobs, they don’t care if climate change is getting worse and there’s no plan to address the health and education needs of the community, there’s no infrastructure plan, there’s no jobs plan, there’s no growth plan. There are anti-Labor-attack-ads being produced. There is a Royal Commission into Trade Unions (designed to destroy the Labor Party) which has descended into comedy. There is a delusional hatred of wind farms. And of course there’s a violent-gun-nut change to gun laws to bring back deadly weapons. But there is no plan. There is just panic.

So I think I’ve answered my question. Clearly there is an eerie mixture of both: the Abbott government is both bored and panicked. Every day is a new day ready to stuff things up. Amusing to watch, I must admit. Like a slow motion car-crash, and the car is packed full of clowns doped up on valium. Someone pass the popcorn!

How do I feel about Labor adopting Abbott’s turn back the boats policy? I will try to explain using a football analogy.

On Sunday I attended the Showdown and was exposed to the most outrageously, offensive, fickle, disrespectful behaviour I have ever seen in the football watching public in my lifetime of watching football. For the uninitiated, the Showdown is the AFL rival clash between Port Adelaide and Adelaide. Basically there were three Port members sitting behind me and my family who decided part way through the match to start cheering for Adelaide. Because Port apparently weren’t playing well enough to ‘deserve’ their support. As a lifelong Port supporter, I don’t want this type of fickle, nasty supporter embarrassing my club by bagging their own team and switching sides at the first sign of scoreboard trouble. But as my mother pointed out to me, perhaps this is what I need to put up with if I accept that to be financially viable, my football club needs as many members as possible. And inevitably, since Port has done phenomenally well to reach 60,000 members this season, a fair chunk of the new members are going to be fickle in nature and will show their disloyal easy-come, easy-go, jump-on-the-band-wagon colours whenever Port is behind on the scoreboard. This is a disappointing reality. But it is a reality I have to accept. Even if it leaves me feeling a little dirty by being forced to pragmatically forsake the club-for-the-true-believers character of my Port Adelaide, to allow for crap supporters who bring financial gains to a previously struggling club; if my beloved club isn’t financially viable, it’s not much use to the true believers as it would soon cease to exist.

So what has this tale got to do with asylum seeker policy you may ask? I see this pragmatic reality as an analogy for what it is like being a member of the ALP and having to accept the political reality of the need to win government by appealing to sections of the electorate who don’t share the values of Labor’s true believers. Case in point is the announcement that Labor’s Shadow Immigration Minister, Richard Marles wants Labor to adopt Abbott’s reprehensible policy to turn back asylum seeker boats. This policy is totally not OK with me. In fact, the whole idea of Labor supporting this policy leaves me feeling disgusted and as a Labor member, dirty. I know for a fact that I’m not alone in this reaction. My ALP branch unanimously passed a motion asking the party not to take this path. I could leave this post at that and go and rant on Twitter about how much I hate the ALP because it has stooped to this low and how I will never vote for them again and will become a Green etc etc etc. But life isn’t as simple as that. Yes, I feel dirty and ashamed. But I also understand why Labor is tempted to take this path. Because no matter how much I hate this fact, it’s still a fact; if Labor’s asylum seeker policy results in a perception in the electorate of the likely return to boat arrivals at the scale that occurred under the Rudd and Gillard governments, Labor will likely not win the next election.

Yes, there are plenty of arguments to say that Labor should lead this policy debate in a positive direction rather than appeasing the bigoted voters who will never welcome asylum seekers with open arms. In a perfect world, Labor would have done a much better job of changing public opinion so that asylum seekers aren’t demonised and rejected by the majority of voters. But in reality, Labor have failed to shift the electorate’s support towards a humane asylum seeker policy, and so too have the Greens. So just like the reality of my football club not existing is much worse than putting up with disloyal supporters, there is far more at risk if Labor loses the next election than a bad asylum seeker policy. In the absence of this shift in the electorate, a pragmatic person would need to consider this risk carefully. This risk is one word. Abbott.

I could spend hours listing all the risks of a second Abbott term. All you need to do is read my blog posts from the previous few years and you will see plenty of evidence of the dangers of giving Abbott a second go with his wrecking ball. The thought of this happening fills me with a deep dread. And even if asylum seeker policy is the only policy you care about, and you vote based on this policy, disregarding the damage Abbott has done, and would further do to health, education, welfare, infrastructure, climate change, environmental policy and many others, alongside a vicious, petty culture war, you can’t ignore that an Abbott government’s asylum seeker policy will always be worse than Labor’s asylum seeker policy.

Before I’m accused of doing this, I’ll admit to doing this. I’m asking you to hold your nose at the dirtiness of Labor’s asylum seeker policy, with the knowledge that it’s nowhere near as dirty as Abbott’s. This argument by refugee advocate and Director of Welcome to Australia, Brad Chilcott, outlines where Labor’s policies could make a difference; such as increasing Australia’s intake of asylum seekers and improving the protections for asylum seekers in the Australian community. Anyone who has followed the changes Abbott’s government has made in this policy area will know that it’s an understatement to point out that there is much room for improvement. Labor can only make these improvements if they win government.

So bring on the abuse I will no doubt get in the comments section of this post, because I’ve heard it all before. I understand that some people can’t ‘support the lesser of two evils’ if Labor goes ahead with their plan to court the bigot vote by confirming that the turn back the boats policy will stand under a Labor government. But I’m desperate to get rid of Abbott. Desperately desperate. Just like I’m willing to accept that my football club’s membership won’t be made up of the old-school true believers anymore, so too am I willing to acknowledge that Labor needs to do whatever they can to get rid of Abbott. And I’m willing to feel very dirty in accepting this reality.

A metaphor occurred to me today about the Abbott government and I felt it was good enough to share. There’s nothing like a good metaphor to clarify how you feel about something; in this case to remind us how destructive and dangerous the Abbott government is for our country.

Imagine that you live in a big old house with your family and in the backyard in the middle of a sprawling lawn is a huge plane tree. In this metaphor, that tree is the Australian government. Yes, this is going to take some imagination but bear with me. The tree has been there forever and has grown tall and wide, with branches reaching out to every corner of your garden. It offers shade in summer, a place of shelter in winter, a quiet spot for an outdoor meal, a branch hosting a tyre swing for the kids and the perfect climbing gym and fortress for outdoor games. You can’t imagine your garden, or your home, without this tree and you always assumed it would always be part of your future.

But then something changed.

A man from the council knocks on your door one day and tells you there’s a problem with your tree that has been raised by a neighbour. He won’t tell you which neighbour, only that the council was taking the complaint very seriously as they would with any risk to the community. The only neighbour you could imagine caring about the tree is the grumpy old man living in the property behind yours. He had never been a friendly person and grumbled constantly about everything; the weather, the council, the rates he had to pay, the noise your children made playing and a few times, the leaves that your tree shed in Autumn, some of which found themselves in his swimming pool that he never used because he whinged about the cost of energy to heat it. ‘Is this about the leaves in the pool?’ you ask, nodding your head towards the grumpy neighbour’s house and wondering what type of ‘community risk’ a few dead leaves could possibly cause. The man from the council avoided answering directly and said instead that the council were ordering you to lob off your trees largest branches before they fall off, endangering your home. And the lives of your family. You suddenly feel anxious. ‘What’s wrong with our tree?’ you ask nervously. ‘It’s got a tree disease which is making it slowly rot. Your neighbour recognised the symptoms. In effect it’s dying and the branches will fall one by one. The entire structure of the tree is unsustainable. You may in fact be better off cutting it down completely to avoid worrying about it in the future’. ‘Let me have a think about it’, you respond, wanting the man to leave. He tells you not to think about it for too long as the council wants something done about it immediately. He leaves and you pass on his terrible news to your husband who then feels as anxious as you do.

The next day you can’t stop looking at the tree and worrying about how quickly it is dying. It doesn’t look sick, but the man from the council is meant to be an expert on this type of thing so you’re sure he isn’t making it up. After a couple of weeks, you decide to get the largest of the branches cut off; just the ones that are risking hurting anyone if they fall off or coming down onto the house. This is the moment Australia elected Abbott. The tree of government was suddenly a risk to the community, rather than a protector.

The day the man arrives to cut off the large branches, you try to make yourself scarce. The sound of the chainsaws grate on your nerves. You return home hoping to feel less anxious now that the branches are gone. But you don’t feel less anxious at all and the tree looks hacked up and pathetic. No more social safety net. Medicare is under threat. Huge cuts to health and education spending. Gonski no longer a bipartisan policy. No more credible climate change policy. No more mining tax. A fraud of a national broadband network that will be no faster than what we have now. Huge increases in the cost of higher education. Cuts to the ABC and SBS. And the economy is flagging under the weight of austerity cuts and lack of confidence. You did what the man from the council expertly told you needed to be done and yet you can’t help feeling like you’ve lost something you’ll never be able to get back. The tree had been there much longer than you had and in one afternoon its dependable foliage is destroyed forever. You feel sad.

The man from the council returns a few weeks later to inspect the tree. He taps his pen on the thick trunk and nearly trips over the tyre that used to hang from the branches as a swing. ‘The disease is still risking the structure. I would recommend cutting the whole thing down. It could easily come down in a storm. You wouldn’t have the insurance to cover the damage’. You nod weakly and promise to do something about it right away. The tree makes you sad now so maybe once it’s gone you will get over it.

The arborist who cut off the large branches is booked out for the next month so you call someone new and he can cut the tree down next week. Again you leave him to it, as you can’t bring yourself to watch your tree become a useless stump. When you return home, the last bits of trunk are being fed into the noisy wood-chip creating machine. ‘Why did you cut it down?’, the arborist asks cheerfully. ‘It was dying, it was risking our home and was dangerous for our family’. The arborist raises an eyebrow. ‘Who told you that?’ he asks. ‘A man from the council. We didn’t really have a choice, it had to be done’. ‘That’s a shame, because there was nothing wrong with the tree. It would have happily outlived you if you’d just left it alone’. Your heart sinks and you feel like crying.

Soon after you’re driving past your neighbour’s house – the one who you suspect had it in for your tree because of the leaves in his pool, and you notice he’s on his porch, talking to someone who looks familiar. It’s the man from the council. They’re laughing about something, clearly sharing a joke. They’re friends. Or at least friendly. Suddenly you get it. There was nothing wrong with your tree. The man from the council lied. You’ve been tricked into doing something against your best interest. Scared into ruining your Australia tree. And your neighbour no longer has leaves in his pool. The rage you feel is impossible to describe.

Dear Tony Abbott,

I will try to keep this letter brief as I know you have a short attention span and since you’ve never responded to my previous correspondence, I can only guess it was because they were longer than your brain capacity could absorb. The main topic of this letter is to let you know that I think you’re an opportunistic, petty, vindictive creep and that you’re running the country as if you would like to imagine that all Australians are equally as petty and vindictive as you. But we’re not. And you’re not going to win your soon to be announced election because we’re better than that.

Over the last 24 hours, Barack Obama, the greatest President America has ever had and possibly the best leader the world has ever seen, has once again shown what it is to be a visionary, compassionate, highly intelligent, gracious, composed and dignified statesman. He sang Amazing Grace at the funeral of Charleston murder victim Rev. Clementa Pinckney as if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to lead the chorus. He celebrated the decision by the US Supreme Court to recognise the constitutional legality of gay marriage by tweeting with hashtag #LoveWins. Obama is a giant of our world, whether you agree with his politics or not. And next to him, your pettiness, your aggression, your predilection for the path of least residence to the lowest common denominator makes you a meaningless flea. A blip that will be forgotten by history as a negative, sloganeering, fear-inducing, mean spirited low point of Australia’s history.

In the last 24 hours, you and your government have shown your true colours. With three terrorism attacks overseas in France, Kuwait and Tunisia, the pleasure in your eyes, the excitement at having a scare mechanism, the opportunity for you to use these events politically, make me feel ill. You’ve said the death cult is coming for Australians. You’re ramping up the rhetoric on threat levels which have absolutely no grounding in reality. You’re using the deaths of innocent people at the hands of barbaric, violent, evil, yet distant, criminals to further your own political cause. If you can’t see how low it is that you enjoy, and take pleasure out of these opportunities to be a scaremonger, let me tell you, it’s unedifying to the extreme. We know you’re only talking about national security because you’ve comprehensively failed to deliver vision, policies, negotiation, competency and functional government in any policy area so far in your dysfunctional term as Prime Minister. You therefore rely on plane crashes, on sieges carried out by mentally ill lone-wolves, and on the tragedies of people in far-away places to make yourself feel better about yourself. To keep your flag collection multiplying. For opportunistic photo stunts. Petty. Vindictive. Creepy.

And of course, everything you do, everything you have ever done in opposition and seamlessly into government is just about wrecking progressive policies with your negative ‘always on’ election campaign. We hear this morning that you’ve already produced negative attack ads about Bill Shorten. Is Shorten the first thing you think about when you wake up? I bet he is. You are the Prime Minister of arguably the best country in the world and all you care about is bashing your political rivals. Of giving jobs to your boys. You want to unpick every good progressive policy this country has ever delivered and take us back to a yesterday that none of us are interested in revisiting. Wrecking health and education funding. Destroying technological advancement. Wrecking environmental policy. Wrecking whole industries and destroying thousands of jobs. Depressing consumer confidence and in turn destroying economic growth. Wrecking social security. Dog whistling about asylum seekers while they are treated in detention centres no better than captives of the ISIS ‘death cult’. Attacking the union movement. Your nasty little thought bubbles on user-pays public education and wielding your wrecking ball into highly successful industry super funds are just the latest of the daily onslaught of terror you wreck on ordinary Australians. And why do you do it? For the same reason as a dog licks his balls. Because he can.

I dare you to go to an early election Tony Abbott. I dare you to believe that Australia wants to give you another chance to do even more damage to the fabric of our community. While you use national security as your play thing, we can see what you’re trying to do. Your leaked memo made that very clear. And when I compare you, the petty, vindictive, creepy flea, to the likes of Barack Obama, I want to cry with frustration. The sooner you give me and the rest of Australia the chance to vote you out, the better.

Yours sincerely
Victoria Rollison