Tony Abbott: Driven by nostalgia!

The Blowfly is always looking for clues as to what drives Tony Abbott.

Shaun Carney, writing in the Age at the weekend, suggested he was driven by nostalgia.

Nostalgia for the good old days of John Howard!

Abbott abhors Labor rule and simply seeks to destroy an ALP government that he thinks is ruining our country.

Carney contrasts this with the Fraser Government who spent most of it’s time and energy trying to get Gough Whitlam away from the levers of power.

They finally succeeded but were hampered by their lack of vision. They had spent all their energies on getting Gough out and had spent little time on policy development of their own.

The Blowfly has some sympathy for Carney’s comparisons.

Tony Abbott has now moved 49 unsuccessful censure motions against the Gillard Government.

He and Christopher Pyne have also subjected Australia’s first female prime minister to the most terrible verbal battering. This leaves many Australians quite disconnected from how our mothers’ told us that we should treat a woman----and for that matter another human being!

Malcolm Fraser has gone on to be a humanitarian of some note who made peace with Gough and has become the conscience of the Liberal Party. He voted with his feet and resigned. Abbott’s asylum seeker approach was just too repugnant to him.

Could we hope that if Tony Abbott, driven by his nostalgia for the years of Little Johnny, could shape the latter years of his life in a similar fashion to Malcolm Fraser?

Could we hope that Abbott would be able to develop a unique vision for Australia after all his negativity and pugnacious behaviour?

Could we hope that somehow the ‘Mad Monk’, Rhodes Scholar and wearer of ‘budgie smugglers’ would see that most Australians, while valuing some of the cultural values of the past, do not want to return there?

It’s unlikely!

As my mother once told me “A leopard does not change its spots!”