With good judgment, little else matters. Without it, nothing else matters.

Kaye Lee

9 years ago

Making judgement calls is the essential job of every leader. With good judgment, little else matters. Without it, nothing else matters.

I have written a great deal about Abbott’s policies over the years. Today’s offering is more about the judgement of the man who once described himself as the love child of John Howard and Bronwyn Bishop, one of whom invaded a country and accused asylum seekers of throwing their children overboard on flawed intelligence, and the other who has admitted she showed “poor judgement” in her habitual use of extravagant entitlements.

In 1979 Tony Abbott wrote an article for the Sydney University student paper Honi Soit in which he described members of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) political party as “South African terrorists”.

Anti-Apartheid activity was alive and well in Australia at this time with the racially exclusive Springboks banned from playing in Australia between 1974 and the end of Apartheid in 1994. Abbott, however, accepted a rugby scholarship to tour South Africa in what former Federal Labor Minister Barry Cohen described as a “universally acknowledged… promotional tour of Apartheid”.

By December 2013, on the death of Mandela, Abbott had changed his tune.

“The world mourns the passing of Nelson Mandela. Nelson Mandela will forever be remembered as more than a political leader, he was a moral leader. He spent much of his life standing against the injustice of apartheid.”

During his university days, Abbott was also quick to condemn feminism and to dictate to women about their reproductive health.

“At university the need to defend Catholicism in a hostile environment had led me to an extremely naturalistic defence of traditional beliefs and disciplines. Abortion was wrong, because it violated instinctive respect for life; contraception, because it was usually part of a “me now” mentality.”

Tony’s beliefs did not stop him from having unprotected premarital sex, just from taking responsibility for the consequences. When his girlfriend became pregnant, Tony chose to dump her rather than jeopardise his Rhodes scholarship.

Tony was a great admirer of Bob Santamaria who he described in 1998 as “a philosophical star by which you could always steer” and “the greatest living Australian”.

Santamaria was vigorously opposed to birth control and abortion and decried what he described as contemporary sexual decadence. He wanted to turn us into a nation of farmers and cottage industries, with women permanently barefoot and pregnant. He was convinced that Australia was under threat from Communism, warning people that communists in Australia were buying up arsenals and guns in preparation for the revolution, and likening the Vietnam War to a crusade.

Tony also views George Pell as one of his mentors describing him as “a fine man … Cardinal Pell is one of the greatest churchmen that Australia has seen”.

Pell has been complicit in the cover-up of child sexual abuse for decades, actively assisting pedophile priests in avoiding prosecution. Pell told a World Youth Conference that “Abortion is a worse moral scandal than priests sexually abusing young people”.

Like his spiritual advisor, Tony Abbott also assisted a pedophile priest to avoid punishment by writing him a reference.

In April 2013, Abbott expressed his admiration for Rupert Murdoch, the man whose media empire illegally hacks phones and bribes officials as standard practice. Murdoch has said power is his aphrodisiac and he revels in manipulation of public perception and his role in bringing down governments.

Abbott described Murdoch as Australia’s most influential businessman going on to say “Along with Sir John Monash, the Commander of the First AIF which saved Paris and helped to win the First World War, and Lord Florey a one-time provost of my old Oxford College, the co-inventor of penicillin that literally saved millions of lives, Rupert Murdoch is probably the Australian who has most shaped the world through the 45 million newspapers that News Corp sells each week and the one billion subscribers to News-linked programming”.

In April 2012, Abbott attacked unionists who he said were trying to blacken Kathy Jackson’s name, describing her as as ”heroic” for her whistleblowing – “a brave decent woman”. As we now know, Jackson has stolen over $1.4 million from the union.

Abbott was also responsible for appointing Jackson’s partner Michael Lawler as Vice President of the Fair Work Commission – the body originally responsible for the investigation into the HSU. Peter Wicks has written extensively about Lawler’s involvement – two of his sons were paid by Kathy Jackson even though they didn’t live in Victoria for example.

Lawler has been on paid sick leave for 9 months, collecting over $300,000 during this time. He can only be removed by agreement between both houses of Federal parliament. The Fair Work Commission is powerless to sack Mr Lawler and the Fair Work Act is silent on the issue of his sick leave entitlements.

Jackson and Lawler are also involved in a very suspicious arrangement which has seen them win financial control of the affairs of a retired judge who is suffering from dementia.

In 2013, Tony Abbott gave a ringing endorsement of Liberal Party executive Damien Mantach. “I know Damien Mantach well. He’s a person of integrity. He has my confidence.”

A few days ago it was revealed Mr Mantach, Victorian Liberal Party director, was accused of embezzling $1.5 million. This was after he left as director of the Liberal’s Tasmanian division amid questions about some $48,000 put on a party credit card for private spending.

Tony’s captain’s picks haven’t gone so well.

knighting Prince Phillip
appointing partisan warrior and serial rorter Bronwyn Bishop to the Speakership
choosing Dyson Heydon to oversee a highly political investigation
sticking with Peta Credlin regardless of criticism of her by his party

A Forbes magazine article about leaders exercising good judgement made the following observations:

Out-of-control ego badly skews leadership judgment. And good judgment, along with clear vision and consistent communication, is absolutely fundamental to effective leadership.

Judgment begins with humility – recognizing that we don’t know everything.and that we are not bigger than our organizations.

If we put the right people in the right spots, ensure that they have the appropriate resources and training, listen to them and let them do their jobs, the ship will hum. If we don’t, we jeopardize our ship’s overall performance–and, quite possibly, the well-being of our women and men.

Taking a highly active role in filling and supervising the most pivotal roles in our organization, however, does not guarantee we’ll make the right hiring calls every time. That brings us to a third critical aspect of judgment: the willingness to acknowledge personnel mistakes and to rectify them quickly.

Judging someone’s judgement is a judgement call. I’ll let you be the judge.