An engaging, decisive leader during one of the most turbulent times in Australian politics, Tony Abbott provides timely and candid analysis of the most complex and critical issues facing our world today.

Tony Abbott served as Prime Minister of Australia from 2013 to 2015. He is credited with policy implementations as early as the first day of the new Parliament, including the introduction of legislation to repeal carbon tax and to stop illegal maritime arrivals, each of which received wide public support and later passed both houses of Parliament. During his tenure as Prime Minister, Abbott’s government created over 300,000 jobs and oversaw free trade agreements signed with both Japan and South Korea. In addition, the world most notably saw—for the first time—a G20 country enter such an agreement with China. Geography alone renders Australia vulnerable to terror, and thus Abbott is able to speak thoughtfully on terrorism and security in the 21st Century, including the threat of ISIS and pervasive religious fundamentalism. With profound depth of experience, he is keenly positioned to offer unparalleled insight on leadership, the global economy, global trade, discuss a Western perspective on the future of Asia, explore the short- and long-term future of China, and provide a unique and timely political outlook for your audience.

Now it doesn’t mention that his relentless negativity was responsible for the end of four prime ministerships: Rudd, Gillard, Rudd Mark II, and, of course, Abbott himself. Doubtless he still hopes to knock of Turnbull before Christmas, but not through “sniping” or “undermining” unlike some people who’ve recently become PM.

Mr Abbott has recently had a large drop in salary, so one presumes that’s the reason for his need to take on speaking engagements for a reported minimum of $40,000 a year. It’s not clear if this includes presenting the trophies at a sportsmen’s night in his local electorate, but just to be sure, if you book Abbott, I wouldn’t let him speak.

In fact, that may have been a good rule for the Liberals over the past year or so…

Anyway, the $40,000 fee got me thinking. If people are prepared to pay $40,000 plus to have Abbott speak, what am I worth? While part of me thinks that most sane people should rather hear me than Tony, I am aware that a large part of that fee is simply the result of him once being the Prime Minister and that, well, nothing I’ve done really cuts it for that sort of money. However, on the other hand, I can pause a lot less and say twice as much in the same amount of time, so I’ve made a productivity improvement which should mean that I’m worth more. Not to mention the fact that every now and then, I actually say something worth listening to. I taught for a number of years and every decade or so, a student would come up to me and tell that what I said in class was really interesting. Ok, it usually had nothing to do with what they were meant to be learning, but still, it happened a lot more often with me than with Barry, the Accounting teacher, whose love of discussing double-entry book-keeping made the seat next to him at the Christmas party well worth avoiding.

Balancing it all out, I’ve decided that I’d be prepared to speak for a figure that had at least three zeroes behind it. Of course, if you’re not prepared to pay more than a hundred, you can count the zeroes after the decimal point, as in $10-00, but I’d expect a nice bottle of wine. Preferably while I was speaking, but if you want to wait to see if I had anything worth saying, then I completely understand.

OK, so, in the spirit of Tony’s intro:

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