Tony Abbott was quick to make wise cracks about Prime Minister Rudd's new ministry, Barry Everingham says he would do well to look at the quality of his own frontbench.
SOON AFTER KEVIN RUDD announced his new ministry, Tony Abbott had one of his rushes of blood to the head.
With a Christopher Pyne-like giggle, he said something like — "that sounds like a C List".
Somebody should tell Tony that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
His frontbenchers are, in the main, dead wood.
Take Warren Truss, for example. A National Party agrarian socialist who has trouble stringing two words together.
Although he might be one of the dullest MP’s in the country, he is regarded by his peers as a decent bloke. But as far as Warren is concerned, what he’s like now is all but academic.
Come the next election, he'll need to watch his back as Barnaby Joyce – the man who wants his job – is elected in the place of Tony Windsor in New England.
Barnaby can’t wait for an Abbott Government. In the event one is elected, Barnaby would be deputy prime minister whenever Tony is overseas.
The pity of that is multifaceted — imagine the days of the Bush presidency with George Dubya and Barnaby holding talks!
Come to think of it, how will Obama react to an Aussie who my colleague Mungo MacCallum described as
“...a finance spokesman who has to take off his pants so he can count to 21!”
In a recent opinion piece in the venerable The Age newspaper, former Howard Government minister and Ambassador to Italy, Amanda Vanstone predicted that, come the Abbott era, Bronwyn Bishop will be elected Speaker of the House.
God help us all if that happens.
When Bishop comes to mind, so does her pathetic mishandling of the case of old people in nursing homes; the elderly being bathed in kerosene while she was minister in charge — a position in which she was supposed to look after elderly Australians.
But that’s not all!
Bronny, as she is called by her dwindling circle of mates, has that incredible bee hive of blonde hair perched on her head. Her ego was so out of control when a few jokers told her one night, after a long day, she was prime minister material. The fact they were almost certainly having a lend seemed to have escaped her.
She quit the Senate and prevailed upon right-wing pre-selectors to give her one of safest seats on the northern beaches of Sydney when Mike Mackellar stood down.
She should have been superannuated years ago.
To give her some credit, no other member of the House has her knowledge of House Standing Orders and Practice and if she wasn’t such a harridan she’d be an excellent Speaker.
So let’s see.
While on the subject of abject political failures, it would be hard to go past Kevin Andrews. He will go down in political history books as the man who traduced Dr Haneef — who was jailed and disgraced because of his colour and religion. Eventually, happily, he became a rich man following Andrew’s appalling behavior.
Like Abbott, Andrews is a disciple of Cardinal Pell.
Now it’s the turn of Peter Dutton, who could easily be a health minister in an Abbott Government.
A former Queensland copper, Dutton will remembered as the opposition health spokesman who didn’t have the balls to ask questions of Tanya Plibersek. He bravely joined the dreadful Sophie Mirabella in refusing to stay in the House when Rudd made his apology to the Stolen Generation of Aboriginal children. You know? Those children Abbott’s hero, Andrew Bolt, claims never existed.
Now we come to the perfectly coiffured and elegantly dressed Julie Bishop. A single childless woman who somehow escaped the opprobrium heaped on Julia Gillard for being in the same situation.
Let loose on the world stage, Miss Bishop has managed to insult our most important and nearest neighbour, Indonesia. She did this by putting words into the mouths of some of our neighbour’s most important people.
In other words, she tells porkies. Which more than likely sends chills down the spines of senior bureaucrats in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. They will no doubt be fearing her potential elevation to controlling that most important collection of the national capital’s bureaucrats.
Her blue cold eyes might send chills down their spines too!
Nothing or nobody in the world of politics can ever be perfect.
Mr Abbott might try to be less juvenile in his remarks about Mr Rudd’s ministers.
He might even take a hard look at his own shadow ministers before he goes public with such comments in the future.
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