Tony Abbott lambasted on US TV show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
IT would appear the secret’s out: America knows about Tony Abbott. Satirical US news program Last Week Tonight with John Oliver today aired a segment ruthlessly collating our embattled PM’s most embarrassing moments. WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE.
In a regular segment devoted to ‘Other countries’ Presidents of the USA’, the HBO show turned its attention to Australia, describing our current leader as “hard line right-wing Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who rose to power promising to be pro-business and religiously anti-immigration — literally, religiously anti-immigration.”
It then cut to Mr Abbott on ABC panel show Q&A, explaining to host Tony Jones that “Jesus knew there was a place for everything and it’s not necessarily everyone’s place to come to Australia”. Cue much laughter from the Last Week Tonight studio audience. “Exactly. Australia is for real Australians, like Tony Abbott — who was born in London, England,” the Last Week Tonight voiceover intoned.
From there, Last Week Tonight cut to clips of former Prime Minister Paul Keating, protesters and even schoolchildren lambasting the PM. “My mummy calls him Tony Dum-Dum,” said one young boy in an undated interview. Then followed clips of Mr Abbott’s disparaging remarks about women (“What the housewives of Australia need to understand is they do the ironing”), gay people (telling 60 Minutes’ Liz Hayes he feels “a bit threatened” by homosexuality), the Irish, and his now-infamous wink while speaking to an elderly sex-line worker. They finished with his silent response to a journalist who asked about his choice of words when speaking about a fallen Aussie soldier:
“Yes, Tony Abbott knows, one panicked pant-sh**ting expression is worth a thousand words,” the voiceover said. Reaction from American viewers — and Aussies who’d managed to view the segment online — was swift and decisive:
Tony Abbott is so bad that now the US is laughing at Australia! @LastWeekTonight #abbottsucks
Shout out to @LastWeekTonight for that amazing smackdown of Tony Abbott and bringing some awareness of the shitiness of the PM
