Even veteran Coalition MPs were treated like annoyances. Not long after Abbott became prime minister, a parliamentary committee was established to work on ideas for encouraging economic development in northern Australia.
Ian Macdonald, a Queensland Liberal National senator based in Townsville – and a former minister for regional services in the Howard government – wanted the committee to examine tax breaks for the region, something the Coalition had promised before the election. Abbott's office, which wanted to dampen expectations about what could be done for northern Queensland, repeatedly fobbed Macdonald off when he tried to establish the scope of the committee's work.
Macdonald got a copy of the eventual committee document only when it was introduced into the lower house – which was when it became public – and there was no mention of tax breaks.
He was incensed, not just about the omission, but about the disrespect dished out to him by Abbott's office. On December 4, 2013, Macdonald delivered a public rebuke that almost no other Coalition politician was brave enough to try, accusing Credlin's office of maintaining "an almost obsessive centralised control phobia over this and every other aspect of parliament".
Speaking in the Senate, he said: "I was not elected to this parliament by the Prime Minister's Office but by the Liberal National Party of Queensland and by the voters of Queensland, particularly those in the north."
He answered to the people of Australia, not to the unelected political fixers who had Abbott and Credlin's favour.
