Tony Abbott Is Incredibly Salty At His Colleagues And He Really Wants You To Know It
Tony Abbott is a messy bench who lives for drama.
Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, a confirmed messy bench who lives for drama, has unleashed on his colleagues in a scathing opinion piece in The Australian this morning, slamming the current federal government and insisting that he, like, doesn’t want to be on the frontbench anyway.
The article, which is modestly titled I Know More About Winning Elections Than Anyone (yes, seriously), sees the ex-PM hit out at government ministers who criticised him for suggesting that Australia should drastically reduce its immigration intake (we wrote about why that was ridiculous and hypocritical over here).
“One thing I am not going to cop is gratuitous criticism from ministers who are only in government because I led them there,” Abbott begins. “I would be failing the taxpayers who provide my salary if I didn’t offer some thoughts on how our country’s pressing problems might better be addressed.”
“You’d think a government that’s lost the past 27 Newspolls might be curious about how it could lift its game,” he added, pointedly referencing the same metric that Turnbull used to justifying knifing him back in 2015. Three more to go Malcolm, and you’ll beat Tony’s record!
“Ministers have gone out of their way to attack a colleague,” Abbott laments, before immediately attacking his colleagues.
Acting Prime Minister Matthias Cormann and Trade Minister Steve Ciobo both come under fire for daring to disagree with Abbott’s stance on immigration. But he saves his harshest words for Treasurer Scott Morrison.
“Then there was Scott Morrison, who claimed reducing immigration had never been discussed while I was prime minister,” Abbott writes. “This is false. I vehemently disagreed with the Treasury line that we couldn’t cut immigration because that would harm the budget.”
“It’s wrong to have a senior minister who invents things to score a cheap point against someone on his own side,” he continues.
To hear Abbott tell it, things are so bad in the government that he doesn’t even want to be on the frontbench.
“It is the Prime Minister’s right to choose his ministerial team,” he writes. “Given some of the policies of this government, I’m happy to serve on the backbench.”
Sure you are Tony. Sure you are.