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If Tony Abbott won’t front a press conference and answer every question journalists can throw at him about his alleged violent bullying behaviour towards Barbara Ramjan then he should resign, says Denise Allen.
Image courtesy Garth Jones (follow Garth on Twitter @platinumdepot).
HAVING READ David Marr’s Quarterly Essay exposé on Tony Abbott, I am convinced more than ever that the driving force behind Abbott’s almost fanatical obsession to be PM is to turn this country into a Catholic version of Islamic fundamentalism. Anyone who lauds and worships Bob Santamaria is someone who must be feared and loathed by every sane thinking person in this country.
Marr relates Abbott’s deeply held belief in Catholicism, which in turn has festered his paranoid loathing of gay people and people who don’t agree with him; his aggressive bullying attitude toward women and his fear and hatred of anyone different to his white Australia paradise (refugees). It indicates a man who has deep seated personal problems and whose view of the world is one in which progressive policies hold no place. His extreme right wing philosophy is simply frightening.
Not once in this current furore regarding his personal sins of the past has Abbott come out and said “I abhor any sort of violence towards women.” He has been far too busy defending himself, saying: “I can’t recall it happening” and then a week later “It didn’t happen”. He is, let’s face it, lying to cover his arse — not once thinking about publicly deploring the sin he is accused of perpetrating.
That’s because it is all about him.
As Marr writes, Abbott thinks he can just go to the confessional, confess his sins, say three Hail Marys and all will be forgiven. I may not be God, but I sure as hell won’t forgive him — as I am sure thousands of Australian women won’t either.
Male journalists – some predictably – have come to his defence. Greg Sheridan in an extraordinary rant on ABC radio and Tony Wright of Fairfax merely calling him “a dill”.
Yes, Tony Wright, men who threateningly intimidate, punch walls beside a woman’s head, pathetically ridicules her chosen words for which to be addressed as a Chair of a committee, daily uses “warlike” words in order to press his political argument, happily stands in front of vile vicious placards regarding the Prime Minister is only a “dill”.
I would call him a thug.
Sheridan ranted like a main possessed about Labor daring to question Abbott’s honesty and challenging him to explain himself, but gleefully joining in with the Liberals and other mainstream media in the aggressive hounding of the Prime Minister when it came for her to explain supposed past impropriety.
Gillard had the strength and moral fortitude to front a packed media conference for an hour or so and allowed the press to ask the hardest questions they wanted of her. She answered every one of them with credible explanations for everything that had occurred during that heady time as a lawyer with Slater and Gordon. She held nothing back.
Abbott hid from the media for a week, though, never showing his face, then finally went on a frilly morning TV show – where he knew he wouldn’t get the “hard” questioning – to deny his punching of the wall beside the head of Barbara Ramjan ever happened.
Bullshit.
I, on behalf of every thinking woman – and man – in the nation, call on Abbott to front his moment of truth in an hour long press conference allowing journalists to ask him every “hard” question they can think of; although, knowing many male journos, I doubt that will happen — they will pussy foot around the issue like the sychopantic fellow misogynists they are. I would hope though that every female journalist including Michelle Grattan will come out firing on all cylinders in defence of their fellow sisters. I’d like to see that.
Not doing that will only reinforce that they all see threatening intimidating behavior toward women as “trivial”.
If Abbott won’t, or can’t, do this then I call on him to resign. Not just as Opposition leader but as a Member of Parliament, for as far as I am concerned there is no place in Parliament for an aggressive, bullying, dummy spitting misogynist who seeks power for power’s sake and who wants to take this nation into the depths of extreme religious Catholicism where women are second-class citizens, where people cannot make their own choices about how to live, love and die, and where we become not only the 51st State of the USA but also an enclave of the Vatican.
That is Abbott’s utopia.
He must explain himself to the Australian people.
If he doesn’t, we will all be left to believe what 85 per cent of the population already believe.
That…
If it looks like a thug, walks like a thug and talks like a thug … it’s a thug.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
17 Comments
Wow I hadn’t heard the Sheridan rant before this. Extraordinary!
He’s still running from the press!
Even Their ABC reported it (in a story that “balanced’ questions about Abbott’s character with his allegations of a Labor “dirt unit”).
Quote their ABC:
“…But Mr Abbott did not answer repeated questions about whether Coalition staff operated a similar dirt unit or were involved in dredging up potentially embarrassing stories about Labor MPs.
Instead, Mr Abbott decided to end the press conference and walk off.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-14/abbott-denies-punching-wall-next-to-rivals-head/4260714
It looks like many people are frightened to come out and give their opinion as they are scared from abbott.
A great story Denise and hopefully with todays Polls it is down down down for abbott.
All his praying for forgiveness for all his lies wont save him
from the Australian public.
He has never been fit to become a PM even from his youth.
Just a thug in the gutter.
Well said, Denise. He is indeed a thug and a bully who uses his wife and daughters as “proof” that he likes women . The denigrating manner he uses toward the PM, always referring to her as”she” is but one example of the contempt that he feels toward women . He’s a religous nutter and a misogynist of the highest order.
I think Greg Sheridan needs to resume his medication.
Gee, and trafficking babies and kids while blowing their country up is not violent hey Denise?
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2012/09/16/from-the-sublime-to-the-shamefully-ridiculous-the-australian-senate-on-vikki-riley-and-west-papua/
And how about this joyous motion where the very mention of West Papua meant that a decent Australian could not be mourned in parliament.
Only Trish Crossin had the guts to speak.
On the very same day a motion was put that we codify our legal obligations to save lives at sea, it was voted down as well.
http://sievx.com/
Read what Gillard has brought us down to with her refusal to stand up to Abbott’s bullying racism.
Keating stared down the racists over Mabo, Rudd stared them down over the apology, Gillard gives them comfort and succour while she brutalises the innocent victims of wars we started.
As much as they will deny, deny, deny the fact of the matter is this episode goes to the very heart of the Abbott persona.
The only thing that made something like this worth it, was to see the EXACT SAME politicians who not a month ago were calling on the PM to explain her actions of 17 years ago come out saying he nothing to answer.
What utter hypocrisy fom an opposition government and absolute contempt for the Australian public.
Yet come next year people will still vote for these clowns and think they’ve done Australia a great service in doing so.
The irony of it all eh!?!
Any credibility Greg Sheridan may have had has surely been destroyed by his performance on ABC radio referred to above. That was truly pathetic.
MarilynS
I have only recently come across IA, & until now have only read the comments, leaving the commenting to other, perhaps wiser heads.
However, I have finally been driven to comment in response to you. This article is about the behavior of Tony Abbott, but you have once again used the occasion to launch a venom filled attack against the PM.
Whilst the PM may not be to everyone’s liking, and may have a differing position on one/some issues, surely you can show some grace towards her. You obviously feel passionate about the asylum seeker issue, but that doesn’t, in my opinion, allow you to attack her at every turn. If the article was about asylum seekers, or Labor’s foreign policy or something related to it fair enough, but gees Louise give it a rest.
Sorry but while I’m not a supporter of Tony Abbott, I’m not comfortable holding actions or opinions held 30 years ago against anyone. We all change over time.
His reaction, however, was discraceful. If he couldn’t remember the incident or honestly believed it had not occurred, he should have said so clearly, acknowledged that memories are fallible and condemned such behaviour
The men vs women tone of the article makes me uncomfortable also. Most of the men in my life are not misogynists and the ratio of women who are dismissive of men to less than admirable guys would be 1:1
True Jan- actions from 30 years ago shouldn’t be held against someone and I do not know the truth about Tony or Julia’s past but I do perceive that the vats majority of women I come into contact with pick up on something about Tony Abbott that they do not like.
I’ve never known a potential PM to be so disliked by women. Alternatively the Coalition seem to ignore that Julia Gillard has an amazing support base in women out there.
This is about violence towards women. And as I said in the article “Not once in this current furore regarding his personal sins of the past has Abbott come out and said “I abhor any sort of violence towards women.” He has been far too busy defending himself, saying: “I can’t recall it happening” and then a week later “It didn’t happen”. He is, let’s face it, lying to cover his arse — not once thinking about publicly deploring the sin he is accused of perpetrating.”
He has also effectively called Barbara Ramjin, David Patch, Lyndsey Foyle liars…
He insisted Julia explain herself which she did…so should he. Regardless of when it happened.
Ken, Gillard is a bullying thug today, she is pandering to the same sort of thug as Abbott to appease the racists and bogans.
Abbott is also a thug, but she is a worse thug today as she traffics and trades humans and blames them for being victims.
Jesus wept, why give that moron Abbott so much frigging oxygen.
Greg Sheridan’s petulant little rant makes me wonder about his sanity. His criticisms of David Marr are a wonderful example of hypocrisy given the rag he writes for has no problems about smearing people without a shred of evidence.
Greg Sheridan goes crazy in a whole new light.
Greg Sheridan sounds like a devotee of some religious cult leader.
Maybe TA hasn’t got over been beaten by a woman back in the Uni days and has been driven to ensure no woman ever does again.
Finally, this clown is getting his own back. His personal attacks on the PM’s character and demanding her immediate resignation have been RELENTLESS. Sheridan represents a huge cadre of the media who close their minds to anything but a regime change with swaggering, lying, sloganeering, and fear mongering as the future fuhrer.
Anything goes with this mean spirited regressive, annally retentive, mean spirited and conservative mob. They dish it out freely and squeel like the self-serving pigs they are when they get only a little of their own back.
Come the 2013 Federal Election voting Australians will face the biggest IQ test of their lives. When you look at most of the MSM journalistic class having already shown a low IQ in political reporting and commentary it is hard for the average punter to be sufficiently informed to pass that IQ test.