Tony ‘Chicken Little’ Abbott

The thought that Costello might come back (backroomers are begging him to) puts Abbott’s leadership deficiencies in a spotlight like no other.

Unlike the beaming former treasurer, he seems indecisive. He seems inarticulate. He seems shifty. He seems likely to go back on his word. He jumps like Chicken Little from crisis to crisis, panicking and getting it wrong — often.

He said about MH17:

“After the crime comes the cover-up."

He doesn’t say that any more.

He said he’d found MH 370. Five months later, he’s still looking, in three oceans, for bits of plane and a dead black box. Why?

He is for the right to be bigoted in April, against it in July. He loves his sister, but believes she will burn a billion years for the abominable sin of cunnilingus.

He is against child abuse, but spoke up for the child abuser, John Nestor. And so on.

‘Havering’ is a good Celtic word that describes what he does — a kind of jumpy, agitated two-bob-each-way, don’t quote me, for Christ’s sake don’t quote me.

He also suffers from what others have called The Las Vegas Syndrome. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Whatever room he’s in, he says what they want to hear, and then he goes on to another room, and says something different, what they want to hear. He never believes he’s being recorded, and what he says will be on ABC radio the next morning.

Thus, he tells Japan he admires the ‘skill’ and ‘honour’ of their wartime accomplishments — though many of those accomplishment were slaughters, rapes, enslavements and exemplary beheadings.

He’s amazed when the Chinese — who remember the Rape of Nanking — object to this. He doesn’t believe they were listening. He thinks they ought not to have been listening. He thinks he’s not important enough to be listened to. He doesn’t believe he’s Prime Minister. He’s just a shifty, havering candidate, surely?

And the net result is people don’t believe him. He never delivers in what he’s promised.

Where are the MH 17 bodies? Where is the MH 370 Black Box? Where is the cancelled Schoolkids’ Money? We’re still getting it. Do we pay the seven dollars, or what? What is going on here?

He’s like a 50s crooner who’s turned up without his Big Band. The band is coming, he assures the audience. Meanwhile, I’ll do these bird imitations I’m good at. This is the budgerigar.

We expect more from a prime minister than this.

We’d like to know, for instance, what side we’re on in Syria.

We’d like to know who killed Reza Barati and when we’ll see him in the dock, the way we’re seeing, night after night, Oscar Pistorius in the dock. We’d like to know what’s going to happen to the 50 Tamil children Morrison kidnapped, messed about and hopes to sell as slaves to Cambodia. We’d like to know if the children on Nauru will be there for a hundred years. We’d like to know if the children on TPVs will be ever able to work, or go to university, or if they’re slaves too.

We’d like to know if he’s abolishing, as Pyne threatens, all research in our universities.

Education Minister Christopher Pyne refuses to rule out university research cuts http://t.co/xoWr8Fneai via @smh
— Dave Donovan (@davrosz) August 25, 2014

The truth is, he doesn’t know these things. He’s not used to having to have policies he’s settled on himself, decided about as leader.

In the past, he did what Howard wanted. And he opposed what Gillard did. The idea of deciding himself, fine tuning himself, what part of the billionairesses’ baby bonus should alter or be cut back or be scrapped is beyond him.

He’s not good at that sort of decision. He’s not good at decisions at all. Credlin makes his decisions. “

He just looks at the headlines and yells: