The Six Most Embarrassing Bits Of Tony Abbott’s World Tour… So Far
We were going to wait until the end of his trip, but I'm pretty sure we'll have another installment ready by then.
Since his election, Tony Abbott has given the nation plenty of chuckles — and a case of acute self-consciousness. But then John Oliver kindly let us know what the rest of the world thought of him, and we can no longer pretend that he’s our little secret. Abbott departed for his first world tour on June 4 — an 11-day jaunt taking in Indonesia, France, USA and Canadia, among others — and the whole world knows the truth: we have the gaffe-iest Prime Minister in the world.
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#1: Je Suis le Tone
On arriving in France, Tone decided to charm some local kids by reaching into the dusty catacombs of his memory, and pulling out some loose fragments of schoolboy French. He didn’t try to imitate their funny accent, though — that’d just be condescending.
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#2: Nigel No Friends
It’s not like the other world leaders dislike Tone, it’s just that they want him to know his place.
Like on the other side of the world, or at the periphery of the photo op.
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#3: Our Leader Of Men At The D-Day Commemorations, France
Okay, maybe they really do dislike him.
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#4: Oh, Canadia…
Tone’s a big picture guy, stopping boats, opening things for business, swerving analysis paralysis. Big picture stuff. Pronouncing the name of your host country correctly? Nitpicking.
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#5: Hanging Out With Uncle Rupe
Now Australia may be Open For Business, but that doesn’t mean that a bigshot like Tone has time to meet deadbeats like the heads of the IMF and World Bank. Tone did find time to have dinner with Uncle Rupe, though.
Junkee didn’t have a correspondent on hand to record the meeting, but News Corp generously lent us a photo of the event.
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#6: Fossil Of The Day
This is all fun and games, but when you’re done laughing, remember that part of Tone’s overseas mission has entailed the establishment of a conservative coalition, with the intention of hindering co-ordinated action on climate change. Tone’s efforts to take climate change off the agenda of upcoming G20 — on account of G20 being an economic forum — have earned him the ‘Fossil Of The Day’ award from the Climate Action Group, for “trying to reconvene flat-earth society“.
And he only just landed in America…
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CORRECTION: This list initially ran with a photo from last year. It is a funny photo, so here it is anyway:
