Shorten is the way to go for sure. The media push for Albo confirms this.

Albo might be able to be a good scrapper and the Labor Party version of Abbott in terms of attacking the Liberal Party.

But it would be a mistake to go down that path, because Murdoch and the MSM will crucify him and label him as obstructionist and how the nation is crying out for a more tempered debate in politics and then attack him and Labor for doing the same thing they(Murdoch) allowed Abbott to do.

This is Abbott's and Murdoch's agenda to turn the debate from the attack dog style of Abbott pre - election to the sudden change of concilatory  deep thinking , out of sight out of mind PM. They want Labor to attack everything as a point of difference.

Bill Shorten will not give them that point of difference with the New Tony Abbott.

Tony Abbott's incredible disappearing act
By ABC's Jonathan Green

In opposition every boat was paraded for full political effect. In government the shutters come down. Photo: In opposition every boat was paraded for full political effect. In government the shutters come down. (Alan Porritt: AAP)

Having spent three years shouting about every new boat arrival, Tony Abbott now says it is this information flow that has been a boon to people smugglers, writes Jonathan Green.

Changing the pace. How deft. And this was no subtle variation.

As opposition leader Tony Abbott toured the country, warning day in, day out - his message amplified by the florescent gleam of the inevitable hi-viz vest - of looming crises in border security and the economy, as well as the emergency for families and small businesses confronting first the prospect and then the reality of the carbon tax.

There was no time to be lost. An election ... now! That was the top line melody that came daily, against a steady bass of 'stop the boats' and 'abolish the tax'. Day in, week out. For three outraged years.

And then he was gone: the incredible vanishing Prime Minister. The sudden political calm was greeted by the muted golf clap of the political commentariat, who recognised the dexterity of this political craft work. The discipline. The sense of ordered, deliberate cunning.

Tony Abbott has been Prime Minister now for eight days, a period marked by his sudden withdrawal from public life, part of a broader closing down that clearly aims to remove the sense of urgent emergency that has been the backdrop for our politics since 2010.

A backdrop Tony Abbott created, of course. A backdrop manufactured against all the available evidence: of a robust economy, the steady but tiny trickle of hapless refugees, the neutral impact of the carbon tax. By rights then this backdrop is his to remove at will. And again, you've got to admire the skill. The political polish.

And that might be all very well around the technocratic margins of economic management, that playing field of Australian politics where two sides test their incapacity to truly alter global events against a set of mutually agreed and entirely sensible objectives. No-one really gets hurt there; they can do as they will.

The asylum seeker issue is a little different.

For three years the Abbott opposition did its best to generate a sense of chaos around the steady trickle of boats testing our borders, compassion and policy resolve. There were never that many, that was the truth, and most had reasonable claims to our protection; that was true too. And coming by sea involved an extraordinary and mortal risk, a calculation that was a fair indication of desperation.

For three years every arrival was proclaimed. From the blogs of the enthusiastic election-now! right, from newspapers of like mind. In the recent federal campaign, Tony Abbott even gave his support to a touring billboard that counted down every new boat arrival. The political line was simple and eager: the then government had lost control of our borders, it was unable to secure the perimeter. And worse: through its incapacity it threatened the lives of people tempted by a trade that had been fostered by the Gillard/Rudd governments' abandon and dysfunction.

This became a central pillar in the argument led by Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison: that the asylum seeker issue had urgency because of the terrible loss of life at sea. The proposition was a simple equation: which was the more compassionate response, to tear down the borders and encourage behaviour that risked life, or strengthen those deterrents and stop the boats and their cargo, all potential victims of death by drowning?

Then this week this issue moved from the noisy clamour of opposition to the quiet whirr of industrious government. No daily updates, no eagerly set upon numbers around the steady flow of boat arrivals.

In another master class in political craft, border protection was now a military operation, an area in which secrecy is a commonplace. Loose lips sink ships.

None of it is consistent, of course, none of it rings true. In opposition every boat was numbered and paraded for full political effect. In government the shutters come down.

We are now told that providing a regular flow of information, the "shipping news" as Minister Morrison called it this week, was a boon to the people smugglers, people capable of running complex multinational systems of human movement, but unable, it seems, to track their operations without the assistance of press releases from an obliging Australian government.

Hypocritical, of course.

And morally?

If as Morrison now claims the provision of this information has aided the smugglers, then we can assume it also, by his own arguments, put lives at risk. Logically that is precisely what Messrs Morrison and Abbott have spent the past three years in opposition doing: spreading information for political purpose that by their own standards of "shipping news" encouraged the smugglers and thus put the lives of asylum seekers in terrible jeopardy.

It's just politics, that's the consensus analysis. Just the sort of canny switch of gears we admire as the deft prosecution of the politician's art. And it's all we expect of them really: to play politics for the sake of political advantage and power.

The fact that they do it is not the thing that should bother us. The fact that we shrug our shoulders and recognise the political calculations for what they are and give them grudging admiration, that's the troubling bit.

We let ourselves be taken for this ride, by participating mutely in a structured political drama that can argue for people's very lives in one month then turn around the next and do the opposite straight faced. One of these elections we might demand better.

That we collude quietly for now is a particularly dark piece of moral turpitude. It shouldn't be assessed against the standards of political cunning, it should be judged against the standards of simple decency.

Jonathan Green is the presenter of Sunday Extra on Radio National and a former editor of The Drum. His book, The Year My Politics Broke, is out on October 1. View his full profile here.

Topics: federal-government, refugees, abbott-tony

It's a Diplomatic Emergency. imo.

Thebas - surely you accept humans are having an impact on the planet??? Limiting that impact isn't a bad thing imo

Upsetting Indonesia isn't smart - any chance they were going to stop a few boats leaving becomes no chance if they want to send a message to the new government

Saul Eastlake right in saying that if there is such a "budget emergency" delaying MEYFO will be bad for confidence because people will think they are hiding something

I am hoping if Abbott goes to the AFL GF he gets the reception he deserves - might destroy any impressions that he is popular - boo away i say

i'll believe the scientists - sorry, well in part - it's not going to be as drastic as they say as fast as they say but it's happening and we should do what we can to slow it down or stop it if we can. including stopping "denuding" the planet

anyways, gotta get to work - sooner i get there the sooner i leave and have my first cider

have a great day

Howard knew the SLAUGHTER was coming and did nothing to prevent it or stop it,once it started, despite daily reports of the killings.
He only moved once the pressure to act started to impact domestically and it had subsided and he and DOWNER refused to listen to the cries for help during the slaughter.

Then he and DOWNER  went in as the hero after the slaughter.......and then he and DOWNER stole their oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea as payment.

Howard and Kelly rewrite history on East Timor
Professor Damien Kingsbury | Sep 08, 2009
crikey.com.au

It is hardly novel that a politician looking back at the glory days of office will want to ensure that their political legacy looks as positive as possible. And for whatever faults one might find with John Howard’s period as prime minister, he was a politically-successful prime minister.

One wonders, then, why Howard finds it necessary to create a palpable fiction over his commitment to East Timor’s independence, which he claimed was both inevitable and that he would go along with it. Similarly, one wonders why a journalist of Paul Kelly’s stature would participate in the peddling of the fiction that “the Howard government decided in early 1999 to work for East Timor’s independence”, given evidence to the opposite is both overwhelming and freely available.

Howard’s claim is contained in Paul Kelly’s book The March of Patriots — the Struggle for Modern Australia, the subject of a self-authored puff piece in The Weekend Australian. In short, Howard not only did not “work for east Timor’s independence”. In fact, both his words and actions were contrary to this outcome.

By late 1998, Indonesia had already been involved in discussions with Portugal and the UN about moving towards some sort of resolution to the East Timor issue, and the Indonesian army had begun forming its anti-independence militias from that time.

Howard’s letter to Indonesia’s President Habibie in December 1998 suggesting a protracted process of resolution was intended to ensure that Australia was no longer seen to be unquestioningly endorsing East Timor’s incorporation into Indonesia at a time when Indonesia’s no longer held such a view.

Howard’s foreign minister, Alexander Downer, publically accepted Indonesia’s patently false denials about the militias, despite intelligence briefs to the contrary. In a discussion between DFAT secretary Ashton Calvert and senior US envoy Stanley Roth, Roth said that a full-scale peace-keeping operation in East Timor was necessary. Calvert, acting on government orders, refused. Roth later said Australia’s policy of keeping the peace-keeping option at “arms length was essentially defeatist”.

Howard also opposed having official Australian observers to the ballot, and only accepted the need for a small parliamentary delegation at the last moment, and after the creation of a politically independent Australian NGO observer group.

Australian Defence Forces were similarly told not to prepare for involvement in East Timor, including no logistic support for the ballot or to send military observers. It did, however, plan to extract Australian civilians if and when the situation deteriorated.

Yet just two weeks ahead of the ballot, Downer told Australian observers in the courtyard of Dili’s Resende Inn that they should not expect assistance if the security situation deteriorated further. The message was clear: do not stay. That was the same message being sent at that time by the militias, who wanted not witnesses to their carnage.

At this time, the Australian government was acting against  — and denying the content of  — a flood if since leaked intelligence showing the Indonesian army was working to derail the ballot. The Howard government’s position on East Timor was, in public that it should remain as part of Indonesia, and in private that it would do nothing to hinder that outcome.

In that Australia sent an intervention force, the Howard government did not even give the order to prepare until 7 September  — more than a week after the ballot, and the force was immediately faced with equipment shortfalls due to this lack of planning.

Ultimately Australia was pushed into leading INTERFET by the US, which acted as guarantor for Indonesia’s acquiescence. To suggest that, as Howard has done, that he secretly supported East Timor’s independence can only be understood as true if such a secret was not only kept from the public, but also government ministers, the most senior government officials and the Australian Defence Force that was ultimately required to cobble together an intervention capacity.

Australia’s intervention in East Timor was a great achievement, if too late to stop a slaughter. But it followed the outrage of the Australian people, not some “secret” agenda of the then prime minister.

Associate Professor Damien Kingsbury from Deakin University is author of ‘East Timor: The Price of Freedom’ (Palgrave 2009).

BREAKING: Tony Abbott has RUN from the AFL grand final breakfast & refused to answer questions about the latest asylum seeker deaths..
Physically running across the turf of Etihad Stadium. Extraordinary scenes.    mug

he's the fittest PM since Harold Holt

They couldn't give a flying about deaths or the "effect" on their international image.

Cash kickbacks are far more important than any number of drowning "aliens". 

Life's cheap in Indo.

never like commenting on this stuff while they are still looking for survivors but the deaths are no more the responsibility of the Indonesians than they are ours - might sound harsh but these people gambled on getting on a boat and lost

it's sad that they feel so desperate for a better life that they will take that big a risk but it seems to be the way it is

genuine regional processing is the solution but it will take good will and genuine intent from all to get it up and running, unfortunately I'm not sure we'll ever get that

missed the footage of Abbott running away but I'm sure it will be shown again and again and again

really hoping the crowd at the MCG send Abbott a message today if they show him on the big screen - sure he is PM but not because people wanted him, they just couldn't vote for the alternative

Coalition 6-point Boat Policy

Stage 1: Stop the boats

Stage 2: Turn Back the boats

Stage 3: Turn Back the boats (if it is safe to do so)

Stage 4: Hide the boats

Stage 5: Boats? What Boats?

ForF....SAKE!!!!!!!!!!!

If the roles were reversed and there were people smugglers coming from Aus to Indo what do you think would be the attitude??????

I lived in Indonesia (central Java) for about five years and I retain a healthy disrespect for the 'social' attitudes displayed by the 'upper middle classes'.  To my knowledge it's hard to compare it to any other social structure in the current world, maybe medieval Europe.

There is corruption at every level and it is accepted as just a part of life and is just kept quiet rather than being regarded as 'illegal' and immoral.

Boost the number of gay and lesbian politicians?? I assumed they were all gay and lesbian already.

Indonesia is just a transit country, I don't blame them at all for turning a blind eye and waving them through - ideally there would be proper queue and processing there, or somewhere near by, but there isn't

Will be interesting to see how the Abbott visit goes - how much ground will he give???

I hope everyone has their receipts so they can claim costs for weddings they've gone to

What is a shock jock? I'm thinking Howard Stern?

We should do the same. Turn a blind eye and wave them on to NZ!

We should do the same. Turn a blind eye and wave them on to NZ!

Womble won't blame us! Who's next? The Cook Islanders

Who are the shock jocks?



Btw do you remember when Pittsburgh Phil said nobody should have jobs? I'm still getting my head around that one.

He's tall. Can't expect him to be very bright, Phil.

Link please ...

... either that or stop talking bollocks.

It was Brandis who made a criminal complaint against Peter Slipper for $1100 , misuse of Cabcharge....... thus preventing Slipper from repaying it,as he had offered to do....... and over riding the same rules that Brandis has just used to sqirm out of this.

If he thought that $1100 of Cabcharge was worth  a police investigation and police charges, then why doesn't he think that $3000 of wedding expenses deserves the same or worse charges?