The Conspiracy Against Abbott

Tony Abbott cannot take a trick. In the 2010 Australian national election the Liberal-National Party effectively won one more seat than the Labor Party. It also slayed Labor on the first preference vote. 44 per cent of the electorate gave their first preference vote to the Coalition compared to only 38 per cent for Labor. It also won a 2.5 per cent swing to it on the two party preferred vote against a swing of about as much against Labor. But despite all this Abbott could not convince the Country Independents, who you would think would naturally side with him, to form government. Gillard and her Labor advisors have totally outclassed Abbott since election day. They have carefully stitched up deal after deal with the Greens, the independent Andrew Wilkie and the Country independents to attain government. To add insult to injury, on the first sitting day of the new parliament, Labor’s Daryl Melham and others secured the numbers for the Liberal Peter Slipper to become Deputy Speaker ahead of Abbott’s preferred candidate, Bruce Scott. What is going on? There are five major reasons why Abbott has lost out so badly to Gillard since election day: old political thinking within the coalition, the national green labor political majority, the ideological consensus in Canberra, Abbott’s personality and the slow turn of the media towards Gillard.