An Open Letter to Tony Abbott (a happier one)
Dear Tony Abbott,
It’s been a year since I last wrote to you. I was very angry back
then, but you’ll be pleased to hear that this letter is not being
written in anger, but has much more of a triumphant tone than my
previous correspondence. The reason for this turn in my mood has
everything to do with the reversal in your political fortunes over the previous 12 months.
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, you are incredibly unpopular. Looking
back at my grievances with you in the past, I can see that much of my
frustration about your behaviour was born from the fact that you were so
obviously getting away with being a complete wanker while still
managing to be elected Prime Minister of Australia. No matter how much I
tried to tell people just how dangerous a prospect you were as a PM,
and no matter how violently opposed I was to everything you stood for,
the Australian voting public went ahead anyway and chose to eat shit because they didn’t like spinach,
and I must admit I may have gone a little mad with the injustice of it
all. But I feel better now because you’ve been exposed. And you’re done
now Tony. You’re finished.
Unfortunately the realisation that your character and your behaviour
has finally caught up to you, hasn’t made up for the terror that you
have inflicted on the Australian public during your first year as Prime
Minister, and obviously won’t save us from the two years of terror we
have to come. No matter what happens to your job Tony, your government
is still ruined. I assume you’re fairly concerned about the permanency
of your position as Prime Minister in the short term, considering just
how unpopular you are, not just with the voting public but also with
your own colleagues. You know as well as I do that the distraction of
blaming Peta Credlin for all your faults can only last so long before
those who used to support you start to question how it is that you
either a) let Credlin make all your decisions for you and put words into
your mouth considering you are meant to be the Prime Minister of
Australia and capable of being the Prime Minister without a
puppet-master controlling your every move, or you b) don’t let Credlin
make all your decisions and instead make all the decisions yourself in
which case the problem is with you and not Credlin and therefore you’re
not capable of being the Prime Minister and should clearly be moved out
of this job. I’m predicting a couple more Newspolls and you’ll be facing
one or both of these questions. But either way, the problem with your
government Tony is that you’re all as bad as each other. I’ve given up
playing the ‘which Liberal MP is the worst in the government’ game
because every time I settle on a winner, another contender reminds us
why they are indeed the worst, and in fact you’re all competing to be
the worst every day as if you’re running a sweep for which there must be
a sizeable prize as you’re all trying your very hardest to piss off the
electorate to the point of total electoral demise. It would be much
more fun to watch this scene unfold if it wasn’t reeking such havoc on
the fabric of my community in the meantime. But thankfully, the damage
you are doing in the short term is just cementing in the minds of
Australians an absolute determination never to let you or anyone like
you anywhere near the job of Prime Minister ever again. So we can take
the short term pain for the long term relief of you being a forgettable
blip in an otherwise successful generation.
There’s one thing I want to make clear Tony. I’m not upset because
members of your government are prone to ‘gaffes’, because I don’t think
anything you or your other badly performing team members say are
actually ‘gaffes’. A ‘gaffe’ is defined as ‘an unintentional act or
remark causing embarrassment to its originator; a blunder’. A gaffe
would therefore be something you said that you didn’t really mean, which
you could easily apologise for and could be written off as a mistake
and something that would never happen again. But no. It’s not just that
the outrageous things you and your fellow Liberals have said are deeply
offensive, and have helped Australia to get to know the true colours of
you and your government, and to discover just how much we don’t want you
running our country. There are no accidental slip ups when Peta Credlin
is feeding words into your ear, which you carefully recite, slowly,
mechanically, repeatedly, eerily, nastily, and sometimes with a
perverse, psychopathic, lip-linking grin. You say exactly what you mean,
and more importantly, you follow through on exactly what you say. So
it’s not the sales pitch, the slogans, the sound bites, the ‘coal is
good for humanity’, the ‘best thing I did for women was to repeal the
Carbon Tax’, the ‘I’ll shirt-front President Putin, you bet I am, you
bet you are’ memorable moments of your harrowing first year as Prime
Minister. No, it’s everything you and your team say, constantly, every
day, backing up your actions; your nasty ideological agenda, your
culture war, your assault on social services, your refusal to take
responsibility and instead blame Labor response to everything, your
policies, your interest only in the super-rich, your hatred of the
disadvantaged, your attacks on health and education, your inhumane
treatment of asylum seekers, your vandalism of the environment, your
racism, your sexism, your mismanagement of the economy, your attack on
unions and the jobs they support, your campaign to use fear to control
us, your beating up of what you call ‘leaners’, your self-entitlement,
the most unfair budget Australia has ever seen, it’s everything you have
ever done.
So forget about looking at your message Tony. Forget about the words.
Your problem isn’t that the ‘left’ has figured you out and has found
the best way to exploit your weaknesses to our advantage. The problem
isn’t the budget sales pitch, something you can solve by hiring one of
your ABC supporters as your new media manager. No Tony, the problem is
you. The turd cannot be polished. We don’t like you and you keep digging
the hole bigger. Scott Morrison as Social Services Minister? You’ve got
to be fucking kidding Tony. If you think that’s going to fix things,
you’re dumber than I thought. And that’s why it’s over for you. Your
government will be voted out in 2016, with or without you as their
leader. It’s over Tony. Australia doesn’t want you as our Prime
Minister. Australia doesn’t want a Liberal government full of
conservative fundamentalists. And there’s nothing you can do now to stop
us correcting our mistake.
Yours sincerely, as always
Victoria Rollison
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