Each evening there is a gathering of blowflies underneath Parliament House around the garbage tins. Sometimes the fare is excellent and sometimes it is pretty ordinary-----much like life!
But sometimes it turns into quite a rich social gathering because some of the blowflies start telling stories.
Last week the most riveting story was one told by a blowfly we only know as Bob. He is a mysterious sort of character who is possessed of a rare insight into the Liberal side of politics.
The story went like this.
“Once upon a time there was an Opposition leader called Tony Abbott. He was a larrikin in his younger days but had moderated this with a stint training to be a priest and had excelled himself becoming a Rhodes Scholar.
He was pipped at the post to be PM by a red-headed woman—a woman he had previously flirted with! This seemed to get right up his nose and from that point on he became a fiery champion of negative politics. Whichever way she went he seemed to think it was his duty to block her.
Adopting a strange demeanour he walked with a gait reminiscent of a body-builder on steroids. A strange grin adorned his face that was broader than a 747’s wingtips.
He pulled strange stunts because he was absolutely desperate to get into The Lodge. He rode horses. He visited factories to shout ‘no carbon tax’. It seemed like ‘no carbon tax’ was the only policy the Opposition had.
Some said he was destroying the ‘Liberal brand’.
Others were still shaking their heads at the fact he encouraged Peter Reith to run as the Liberal party president but then did not vote for him.
He organised a plebiscite stunt on the carbon tax but insisted that he would not be bound by the outcome of it.
At the beginning of the hung Parliament he supported a more mature and quieter ‘polity’ and was looking forward to a more productive parliament. But he started moving motions that censured the government. Question time became a debacle and the scrutiny of the government was reduced.
And then there was the spectre of industrial relations policy. Facing large shortages of labour driven by the robustness of the mining sector Australia was struggling . And yet Abbott had said that he was not going to re-introduce Work Choices or anything like it----largely because the last Government he was a member of came to grief because of it! He adopted a ‘small-target’ approach as Barry O’Farrell and Ted Baillieu had taken.
He was also against the mineral resources and rent tax. Although Australians owned less than 20% of the mining industry we were having our finite resources depleted and effectively exported to China but Abbott was stuck on a pathway to support big business.
In due course the Opposition leader incurred the wrath of his troops who were keen to take the Liberal Party in a new direction .They overthrew him just before the election.
He returned to the seminary and spent his life in solitude. He became known as the ‘Mad Monk”.
Some of the blowflies thought it was a fairy tale.
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