Skip to main content

Australia wakes up to its new "Crocodile Dundee" PM

The original Crocodile Dundee (he of the movie) had some charm about him and was a rake.   

Australia wakes up to a new PM - post today's election - described in a piece "Pimping his daughters, a gaffe-prone Crocodile Dundee steps up to lead Australia" on the globalpost in not the most flattering of terms and certainly not suited to running a country in the 21st century.

"Comparisons in international politics are often futile. But given that President Barack Obama once described British Prime Minister David Cameron as a "lightweight," one can only imagine what his assessment of Tony Abbott might be.

Abbott is the man most likely to become the next prime minister of Australia. On Saturday, his party is expected to defeat the Labor government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

And that could alter the world's benevolent view of Australia.

An ex-boxer who once trained for the priesthood, Abbott remains a staunch Catholic with strong anti-abortion views.

He has modeled himself on the "bloke next door," the family man Australians can trust. For most of his campaign he was flanked by his tall, coquettish adult daughters. The three young women have apparently succeeded more as objects to ogle than in modernizing their father's views.

"If you want to know who to vote for," he told the Australian Big Brother house, "I'm the guy with the not bad looking daughters."

As a student, he wrote, “I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons.” When questioned by an interviewer, he declined to repudiate that notion.

On another occasion he sent Twitter into a frenzy by praising a female candidate’s "sex appeal." He later said he needed to be told by staffers why the comment had upset so many people.

It’s this ignorance of the modern world that makes Abbott look a bit like Crocodile Dundee, in a suit, running for the premiership (but without the crocodiles or the big knife).

He’s been accused in parliament and in the blogosphere of being a sexist misogynist, but criticism in the mainstream media has been less fierce. The influential Murdoch press has taken a vocal pro-Abbott stance.

His "larrikin" (Aussie for “blokey” or rowdy) streak has played well to the masses.

Nicknamed the "Mad Monk," Abbott’s ascendency has been well-managed, but not without luck, his time in opposition coinciding with the implosion of the ruling Labor Party."




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

Isn't there something radically wrong here?    Israel, a non-signatory to the NPT has, evidently, been the cause for those countries that are Treaty members, notably Canada, the US and the UK, after 4 weeks of negotiation, effectively blocking off any meaningful progress in ensuring the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.    IPS reports ..... "After nearly four weeks of negotiations, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in a predictable outcome: a text overwhelmingly reflecting the views and interests of the nuclear-armed states and some of their nuclear-dependent allies. “The process to develop the draft Review Conference outcome document was anti-democratic and nontransparent,” Ray Acheson, director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS. “This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-dependent allies for l

#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas  stopped  him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed  behind his back  into their patrol car, where they say he  shot himself  in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story,  says in an interview  that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?