For the second time in five days one of the nation’s political leaders has gone MIA in 7.30 Reportland.
It was Kevin Rudd’s turn last week, with the robotic PM overriding his own software with an uncharacteristically human snap at Kerry O’Brien over the failure of the Copenhagen summit: “It might be easy for you to sit in 7.30 Report Land and say that was easy to do,” Rudd spat. “Let me tell you mate, it wasn’t.”
But tonight, it was Tony Abbott who found himself entangled in a protracted and excruciating exchange about “the two Abbotts” over his different positions on new taxes and maternity leave. And if Kevin Rudd lost his cool last week, Tony Abbott simply got lost - and he’s given Labor some great negative material ahead of the campaign.
O’Brien was asking Abbott a series of valid questions about how, in February, the Opposition Leader said on radio that there would be absolutely no new taxes under a Coalition Government, and then just one month later announced that a $2.7 billion tax would be imposed on large businesses to fund paid parental leave.
Abbott tried to draw a very cute distinction between those things that are said in the heat of the moment, such as on a radio interview, versus what he called “carefully prepared scripted remarks” which should be taken with more gravity.
This was the key exchange:
Abbott: “Kerry, all of us when we are in the heat of verbal combat so to speak will sometimes say things that go a little bit further.”
O’Brien: “Mr Abbott, we are not all leaders of major political parties.”
Abbott: “Politicians are going to be judged on everything they say, but sometimes, in the heat of discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely, uh, calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark. Which is one of the reasons why, the, the the statements that need to be taken absolutely, as, as gospel truth is those carefully prepared, scripted remarks.”
Abbott seemed to suggest later that O’Brien was merely dragging up maternity leave as an old issue. “This is an argument we could have had in March,” he said.
He then bristled when O’Brien suggested that the maternity leave example helped explain why Abbott was known in the party as “the weathervane”. Abbott said he didn’t think many people called him that. O’Brien then reminded Abbott of his claim at a meeting in a small Victorian town that climate change was “absolute crap”, even though he was saying on the national stage that something clearly had to be done about it.
O’Brien was right to point out that it all sounded a bit reminiscent of John Howard’s famous distinction between “core” and “non-core” promises.
Abbott was being smashed all over Twitter tonight - not that surprising, given it has a lot of commie users - but he still deserved the flak. It was a rotten performance, it made him look like a sophist who would say anything if he thought there was a vote in it. Clearly he’s no orphan there. But at this stage in the cycle, when he’s attacking Rudd as the flip-flop guy, he can scarcely afford another night like tonight.
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