From the Prime Minister’s website:
“As Prime Minister, Mr Abbott has promised to spend a week each year living and working in an indigenous community. In recent years, Mr Abbott has spent time working as a teacher’s aide in Coen and as a truancy officer in Aurukun as well as participating in Bush Owner Builder indigenous housing project near Hopevale on Cape York. Last year, Mr Abbott and a team of business leaders spent four days helping to refurbish the library of the local school at Aurukun.”
So, that must be coming up soon, I thought.
In fact, this very month according to this ABC story, Tony Abbott to spend week in Torres Strait, Northern Peninsula Region. But then the story is from the ABC and who can believe the ABC? After all they tell us in that article that:
“Last September, Mr Abbott ran the country from a tent during a week-long stay in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.”
While I may sound a little pedantic here, I seem to remember that he cut trip short, leaving on the Thursday to farewell troops to going to Iraq, but promising to return on the Friday. Unfortunately, due to “terror raids” he had to stay where he was, because, apparently, the security forces couldn’t manage without him.
Still, he did make the commitment and that means that he intended to do it. Intending to do something is the same as doing it? Isn’t that right?
Like his commitment to the Paid Parental Leave Scheme, which can be considered something that he did, because it was only scrapped when he decided that it would be better to make a commitment to improving childcare, and now that he’s committed to improving childcare, well, we can all feel better already and mark it down as one of the great achievements of the Abbott government like reducing the deficit and stopping the boats. Although some silly people tried to suggest that the fact that a boat made it to Western Australia the other week meant that we hadn’t actually stopped all the boats, they ignore the fact that this boat was stopped, and the people sent back to where they came from, like that SBS show has been suggesting for three seasons now.
Like those submarines that the Liberals promised would be built in Adelaide. The people of Adelaide didn’t seem to show any gratitude for the promise and seemed to think that by putting the process out to tender that wasn’t the same as actually building them there, which seems to rather harsh. To placate those ungrateful South Australians for presuming that just because there’s already a draft announcement awarding the contract to the Japanese that the decision not build the submarines there has already been made, Mr Abbott has now promised to build ships there instead… Sometime after the next election, but he has brought it forward to his next term in office so that he can ensure it starts, because if Labor get in, they may stop the project because Labor is anti-jobs, anti-Australian, soft on borders when it comes to “illegals” and too hard on borders when it comes to foreign investment and overseas workers.
And six months, Mr Abbott promised that good government would start that very day, which is another thing he should be commended for thinking and saying, even if he didn’t actually produce anything that could remotely be considered good government.
Although we did have Mr Turnbull telling the Australia-China Business Forum:
“While the unions will advocate for what they believe to be in their members’ interests – and the fact is that the vast bulk of 457 visa holders choose not to be union members – the Labor Party is supposed to be a party of Government, and that brings with it the responsibility to stand up for the national interest.”
Not only do they choose not to be union members, a large number of them choose to work for below award wages too, and enjoy being exploited, which is their choice and good on Mr Turnbull for saying so. Mr Turnbull is showing the sort of “good government” Mr Abbott was talking about back in the days when Joe Hockey was still prepared to come out of the house occasionally.
So, now that we know that Mr Abbott will be running the government from an Indigenous community in August. That should mean that we won’t see him going straight to see the Governor-General on Monday so that Bronwyn doesn’t have the chance to move a spill motion in the party room.
Gee, I hope there’s no emergency that’d make him cut his visit short this time. Still, we can rest assured knowing that Mr Abbott says something, he considers it as good as done.
Even if he never actually does it.
