Another Open Letter to Tony Abbott

Another Open Letter to Tony Abbott

By Victoria Rollison on April 25, 2014 • ( 44 )

Dear Tony Abbott

I’m writing to you again with the knowledge that you clearly haven’t read my previous correspondence, including this letter, this letter and this video.
Since I wrote those letters, you have gone from my worst nightmare as
an Opposition Leader, to an even worse nightmare of a Prime Minister.
Yet, as I was reminded
this week on Twitter, and as I would like to remind anyone who reads
this letter, you aren’t a scary monster. Thinking of you has some scary
creature underneath the bed is probably not very helpful because it
gives you a status you don’t deserve (and I don’t like the idea of you
being anywhere near my bed). But seriously Tony, to be scary and feared,
you need to be successful. But when you look at your term as Prime
Minister so far, it would be inaccurate to suggest you’ve been
successful because you clearly have not. A bit like when you interrupted
Parliament to say that wreckage from Malaysian Airlines flight MH370
had been found, when it hadn’t. And a bit like when you pretended not to
notice 100,000 Australians protesting across the country against you
and your government. You just end up looking like a bit of a loser Tony.
A pathetic, desperate, not-very-quick-on-his-feet, not very
charismatic, not very articulate loser. And that’s why you’re not a
monster. Because monsters aren’t desperate losers. So you don’t qualify.

Let’s
look at another example of your desperate mode of government, which
leaves you and your colleagues exposed as weak. Joe Hockey has clearly
embraced the role of
yelling-strict-father-star-of-all-conservative-wet-dreams-dictator in
his recent reasoning for why huge cuts need to be made to government
spending. Apart from the fact that it seems counterproductive for your
government to be attacking a segment of the community which you have
come to rely on for votes – pensioners – by telling them that they need
to get over their sense of entitlement that the pension will support
them into retirement, it also seems incredibly hypocritical for you to
go after the sense of entitlement of people who have paid tax their
whole lives, whilst also giving rich people up to $75,000 for six months
of maternity leave. Apologies for the length of the last sentence Tony,
but there was no more simple way to explain it. The whole small
government versus big government thing you rely on goes up in smoke
through this hypocrisy and leaves you looking like an opportunistic,
vote-grabbing bastard. Particularly because you said you wouldn’t be
cutting pensions, numerous times. So that would make you a liar, would it not?

But that’s not all Tony. You and Joe Hockey keep banging on about spending cuts, whilst completely ignoring revenue issues.
Might this be because part of the revenue problem is that Australia
hasn’t reaped the benefits we should have from the mining boom? And
isn’t the mining tax part of Labor’s solution to fix this mistake? But
while you and Joe say over and over again that the government has run
out of money and that pensioners are costing too much, wasn’t part of
the reason the previous Labor government implemented the mining tax
because they wanted to increase the superannuation savings of
Australians from 9% – 12%? Wouldn’t that have reduced the reliance of
Australians on the pensions when they retire?

Speaking of your ‘run out of money’ line, surely even you can see what a bad look it is to announce that you’re spending $12 billion on Joint Strike Fighter
jets in the very same week that you’re preparing the electorate for
your ‘it’s time to tighten our belts’ budget. I know you’re disappointed
at the criticism you’ve got over this decision, after making it very
clear how pro-defence spending you were in the election and after the
previous Labor government also supported this project. However, the
difference between your government and the Labor government is that
Labor didn’t whip up a fear campaign about a budget deficit. Labor
didn’t say the government has run out of money. Labor didn’t try to
scare the electorate into thinking Australia’s debt levels were going to
lead to a default and a Spain and Greece like debt crisis. You chose
the austerity for everyone except for Gina Rinehart bed and now you have
to lie in it. You’ve been talking about a ‘budget emergency’ to justify
cutting health, education and welfare at the very same time as you’re
spending thousands of lifetimes of old-aged pensions on imported planes.
See what I mean about not being very smart Tony?

And
let’s not forget the mess you’re making with your Direct Action Policy.
First you say climate change is crap and spend years placing all your
eggs in the ‘axe the carbon tax’ basket. But now you’re planning to
spend tax-payer funds on a useless, wasteful program that has no
guarantee of even being taken up by polluters, let alone reducing
emissions. So you’re basically pissing money against a wall, for no
community benefit other than a few rich polluters who will be free to
rort tax payers by spending government funds to reduce emissions. When
these polluters shouldn’t be polluting our atmosphere for free in the
first place. This is lunacy Tony. This isn’t the work of someone to be
feared. This is the work of a desperate man who has zero credibility.

I
know you will never read this Tony, but I feel better just for having
written it. You’re not scary. You’re pathetic. And the way you’re going,
I’m not going to have to put any effort into my #OneTermTony campaign,
because you’re clearly working hard enough for both of us to this end.

Yours Sincerely

Victoria Rollison