Abbott gets the gloves on

abbott riley

Readers with longer memories and more respect for truth than most gallery journalists will recall, perhaps with lingering frustration, the moment when then-Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was cast as a strangle-tongued oaf by Channel 7’s Mark Riley. The video is here and before reading any further it is worth clicking the link to review that 2011 encounter, which captures in miniature the treatment that would be the future PM’s lot until the press corps could celebrate the installation of a usurper whose standards of honesty and honour are more in keeping with its own.  First comes the newsreader’s intro to establish that Abbott is an oddball, then a few seconds of background, followed by the slimy Riley’s request that Abbott respond to the patently absurd charge that the future PM had insulted a dead Digger.

What followed was an example of Abbott’s own deficiency. Rather than take Riley to task for his false premise and stitch-up, he glared in silent fury at his inquisitor. Had he decked the alleged reporter, no court would have convicted him — although Laurie Oakes certainly did, the segment concluding with his pronouncement that Abbott was a very strange and offensive bird indeed. In the dead-tree press, reporters who do not need blow dryers piled on, one example being the SMH’s Tim Dick, now an Abbott-hating columnist after finding his true calling as as a lawyer. What is that old joke about lawyers and moving lips?

Abbott’s supporters wondered why he never hit back at Riley’s smear or any of the other and many misrepresentations that would follow — the wink at the ABC’s Jon Faine, for example, when a disabled granny called in and mentioned that she worked as a sex-line hot talker. Just look, the press gaggle honked, the man really does have a woman problem!

And so, for the next four years, did the stitch-ups and slanders flow, Abbott never once living up to his pugilist’s reputation by punching back.

Now ousted and far too late to save his lease on The Lodge, it seems Abbott has finally come out of his corner. Below, part of his letter to the December 15 Australian in which he responds to Wayne Errington and Peter van Onselen’s book Battleground, which purports to be the full and accurate account of Abbott’s rise and fall. It is, he begins, “a hatchet job” then follows with this:

The book is riddled with errors of fact but one is especially egregious.

On page 213, the authors state: “We would like to thank Tony Abbott for engaging with us. He helped shape our arguments in this book even if he may not like the conclusions we reached.”

I did not “engage” with the ­authors. They requested an interview and emailed questions. These were so obviously a stitch up that I declined to answer other than to deny some of their claims.

The book — to put it at its kindest — is partisan advocacy rather than disinterested scholarship.

Tony Abbott, Canberra, ACT

Should Abbott rise again — stranger things have happened — that feisty and new-found willingness to hit back will come in handy. And who knows, perhaps a spell in the wilderness will make him a better leader, one prepared to sack and exile backstabbers and leakers in his next cabinet. Expect Oakes et al to deride that as Abbott’s lack of loyalty.

As The Australian is behind a paywall there is no point in linking to its letters page. Instead, if you have the stomach, follow the link below to read the now-learned Dick’s latest Fairfax column. Unlike his earlier work as an alleged purveyor of unbiased reportorial truth it is clearly labelled as opinion.

— roger franklin

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