The enduring cult of Tony Abbott

From its peak on the North Sydney Military Road, Spofforth Street hurtles down towards Mosman Bay, eventually hitting a slope so steep that a postcard view of the city skyline and the Harbor Bridge rises above the houses, and then descends a winding staircase through a beautiful and slightly spooky rainforest, giving one the impression of trespassing.

Near the center point of the bay is the Mosman Rowers Club. This has been the heart of Tony Abbott’s country for almost a quarter of a century, and last night it hosted one of his new book launches. Australia: A History.

The crowd is more or less what you’d expect; It’s predominantly white, mature and impeccably turned out, but there are some genuinely young people in attendance and don’t think they’re being dragged along by their Conservative parents, with one even asking Abbott a question.

He interviews Sky News presenter and former Warringah candidate Jamiee Rogers (to give some insight into the tenor, Rogers says, “there was one part of the book that I thought was a bit lacking”, which was that Abbott didn’t write enough about himself), followed by a Q&A with attendees.

Abbott, who has been on his best behavior throughout, modestly responded to the question about his own tenure – saying half a page of the book was true during his wild two years in office. “Malcolm Turnbull takes up about a third of the page,” he added to laughter. “Bay Harborside Mansion!” He throws it in, and the crowd of people gathered in one of Australia’s wealthiest regions, where mansions climb like staircases to the surrounding cliffs, howl with approval.

More than one participant was told that the book should be taught in schools. Abbott put aside his humility and accepted this wholeheartedly. “You’d think any fair-minded person would think ‘of course it should be on their reading list,'” apparently pre-emptively annoyed by all the woke nonsense that would keep his work away from young minds. It’s a recurring theme: “I’ve been interviewed three times by ‘Our ABC,’ and they were all about Indigenous issues and why I wasn’t covering them more,” he says, knowing the murmurs.

One attendee, who had traveled from Melbourne specifically for the event, simply said “we want you back” to cheers and applause.

You might call this tone obsequious if it weren’t so sincere: The Tony Abbott cult is very much alive here in this room. One has a hard time imagining one of the office’s new occupants still being told by the public that the country needs them. Maybe Gillard, but that has a lot to do with the dignity she’s shown since leaving; If he had continued after his dismissal, as Abbott did – or Turnbull, or Rudd – he would have been subjected to the outspoken, visceral hatred he felt while still in office.

But it was always like that with Tony. Of course, people hated him with the same particular fervor that they came to hate Scott Morrison, unlike the general hatred/disappointment that affected Turnbull and now affects Albanese. But no one can imagine that six years from now any of these men will still be in the same situation. get pieces of ideas He argued that it should be brought back. And frankly, it’s catnip for the conservative media that Abbott has fulfilled the role of the last great conservative intellectual and turned his mind to Australian history.

On the night in Mosman, Abbott is humble and self-aware; He responds to the suggestion that he would be a great leader again by insisting that, no matter how much he misses it, his current popularity will not survive his return to office: “Old leaders tend to feel a glow of nostalgia about them, even among people who didn’t think much of them at the time.”

He adds: “But if you want to write a note to Sussan Ley…”. He laughs more.

Frankly there’s an odd gap here – perhaps it’s the nature of such events, but no one asks anything specifically about policy, and when Abbott expresses his fears for Australia’s future (“our economy is more stagnant than I’d like, we’re in more danger from a security perspective than I’d like…”) it’s too general. Which makes sense; Aside from his hilariously punishing and universally reviled second budget, that’s not what people remember about his brief, chaotic stay at the lodge.

We should not exaggerate his popularity; The last election revealed a conservative opposition leader clearly working according to Abbott’s tactics, and locally, after defeating him soundly in 2019, proto-teal Zali Steggall doubled her margin. Still, it’s worth considering why Abbott keeps cutting it, not only for the fans in this room (some of whom resemble paintings from the Civil War era who started running an upscale wine bar) but also at his seemingly shaky party. He can articulate generalized conservative fears to this audience, make them seem urgent, connect them to bigger ideas. His failures and the shortness of his reign only kept him sidelined; Compare him to Albanese, who had a long reign but somehow alienated everyone else, repairing and reconciling his way to a historic majority.

Abbott is asked about the book’s lavish tribute to Bob Hawke, which prompts him to recall his statement upon Hawke’s death in 2019; here he was claiming some of Hawke’s legacy for his party – “You could say he had a Labor heart but he had a Liberal head”.

This reminds me of the day after Hawke’s death when Abbott spoke to Alan Jones on 2GB, probably the most committed of the mass of Abbott fans in the media. a woman He called me crying and said“I’m not religious, but they did the same thing to Jesus. Keep going. We love you.”

This was Tony Abbott’s last day in office – 17 May 2019. He has just emerged from an unnecessarily embarrassing situation party and leader Let’s not forget that the day before what was predicted to be a very tight election, he was hailed by his supporters as not only a martyr but also a messianic figure. It was a perfect signature.