“Face it, Malcolm Turnbull is streets ahead of Tony Abbott"
Extracts SMH of article by By Amanda Vanstone
8 April 2018 — 7:36pm
"Perhaps he really believes it. The idea to appoint knights and dames didn’t go through a cabinet process. Neither did the idea to make Prince Philip a knight on Australia Day. Our honours system goes to the core of how we see ourselves, who we have become. It’s notable that the Howard government, despite suggestions that it should, never proposed doing it. John Howard understood Australia in a way that Abbott never has.”
"Once, when there was a check around the cabinet table as to who thought what, the result was a tie. Much to the chagrin of the other half, Howard voted against his own preference. Why? Because he thought the majority of Australians didn’t agree with him. OK, maybe he wouldn’t have on another issue. But he had an ability to read the public mind.
In stark contrast Abbott seems to assume that there’s some enormous silent majority out there yearning for implementation of his world view. The same sex-marriage result in Warringah should have been enlightening for him.
On that issue Abbott built a reputation among colleagues that was not commendable. Instead of managing an issue to get a result that brought everyone to the table, Abbott mismanaged colleagues and the issue because of his own personal views. People on all sides of the debate within the Coalition were unhappy. It was his conduct of it that led a number of colleagues to conclude, albeit with some regret, that they just couldn’t trust him any more.”
