Lyn,

May I suggest you move on. You obviously didn't vote for Abbot but over 50% of electors voted for him via their local candidates. You may not like him, his policies and how he has presented himself but that did not deter others. Sour grapes because he won/your candidate lost doesn't change this outcome.

Regards
DKit

ps I didn't vote for him either in either house but the reasons are relevant here. D.

Lyn,

You and other left whingers are victims of your own propaganda. You have been telling yourselves and anyone that will listen that TA is a nasty, spiteful, woman hating bigot, while anyone that has worked with him knows quite the opposite. The success of any endeavor is to know your enemy. Clearly labor didn't which is why they failed so spectacularly.

hopefully Tony will invest some money into getting some intelligent women to be journalist for the ABC/Fairfax and into prominent positions into uni's. The public are over feminist nearly all who swallow the gw fantasy and insist on having their little hateful rants.

In my own mind, I labelled him as Phoney Tony long ago. He is a man who has never been sure of who or what he is.

If he tries to be all things to all men and women he will up being nothing to anyone!

Tony has been promoted far beyond his level of competence, much like Julia and Kevin. On a broomstick, he is trying to fly too close to the sun.

Everyone knows where that ends!

Interesting article, however I'll leave the psychology to the experts, the real test is the nature and record of the Abbott government.

Abbott is a conservative politician and the leader of a political party that is essentially the representative of business and plutocracy, so any legislation that restricts the creation of profit has to be eliminated. Denial of anthropogenic climate climate is simply an example of the usual rear guard action to delay the inevitable.

"The defeated ALP and the minor senate parties should immediately pass this legislation: because I/we the new government have a clear mandate. As Chris Bowen has retorted, the ALP "now has a mandate to oppose"."

Indeed, we elect a parliament, not prime ministers.

Only time will tell how much damage Abbott will cause to the Australian economy and social democracy, my bet is that we will have our our version of Thatcher's UK. Then we'll see all those individualistic, unemployed small entrepreneurs come whining to the "nanny state" for help. Of course they will turn back to Labor.

Chris Bowen has retorted, the ALP "now has a mandate to oppose"."
mac,
That would be ok if they opposed nonsense but they don't do they . They promote nonsense & incompetence & oppose sense & competence. At least that's what they've been doing since Goaf.

Thanks Lyn for an accurate synopsis of Abbott.

'Abbot has relentlessly without any conscience, Christian or otherwise, falsely branded a price on carbon as a terrible impost on ordinary Australians.' Couldn't agree more

I'm another who saw him as phoney Tony from the outset. He won't change his spots.

Now that Gillard and Rudd, who he and the combined might of the corporate (Murdoch) media vilified for years, have gone, the electorate will focus on him and his phoney unworksble policies.

I, like millions of others will 'maintain the rage' - against him and what he stands for.

If this is the level of understand one gets from studying psychology in our universities it is time we shut down the courses.

Graham, these rants by this woman really are below the standard we expect from OLO.

I didn't know you could read minds or see into the future Lyn?
As insightful as anyone might be, none of us know ahead of time, what Tony might do. He has just arrived and like any new leader, deserves a fair go!
If you want a particular outcome Lyn, it is as simple as persuading the public, and therefore, causing the politicians to follow where you lead?
Endless criticism won't do it!
In fact, just the very opposite!
In any event, returning someone like Mr Rudd, was simply impossible and or unimaginable!
Of more interest, should be what Mr Rudd intends to do?
Given he has, according to very cogent reports, almost single-underhandedly, acted to destroy a once great party. Therefore, should his reported treachery be rewarded?
And as long as he remains, continues to threaten more of the same, simply to serve, his own unrequited ambitions and massive ego?
Rhrosty.

With articles and opinions like this circulating we will probably see Abbott as PM for about 3 terms. The "progressives" simply do not respect their opposition. They paint them as "simplistic" or racist, sexist, xenophobic or whatever other slogans appear trendy at the time. Until "progressives" cease to think of themselves as harbourers of intellectual supremacy and respect their opponents, they will languish in opposition.

On a side note, I didn't know psychology was predicated on "change". Doesn't this make it a discipline concern solely with normative morality, rather than understanding the psyche? Under such a view, the psyche would only ever be viewed as "something that it ought to be", and never "what it is". It's little wonder then that "progressives" live in the ideal and not actual.

I agree with Roses1 - a fine essay indeed. Far supertior to the hairy-chested triumphalism in Walter Lohmans posting. And to most of the hairy-chested (three ceers for Tony) stuff that has been written by those on the right side of the culture wars

The tone and content is really not that much different than that expressed by Greg Craven in his fine essay too, except that Lynn provides more contexts for framing her argument.

I liked the way that Jason Childs mentioned the work of both Tony Judd via his superb book Ill Fares the Land, and the work of David Harvey and his comprehensive critique of the toxic legacy of Friedrich Hayek.

Re the despair featured in Rebecca Griggs fine essay, these words were written by Jules Henry in his 1963 book Culture Against Man. Slightly modified by me.

"In Western Culture today one must make a distinction between the culture of life and the culture of death. In the minds of most people science and the culture created in its image has become synonymous with destructive weapons, i.e, with death....
Where is the culture of life?
The culture of life resides in all those who, inarticulate, frightened, and confused are quite rightly wondering "where it will all end". Thus the forces of the Universal Death Machine are confident and organized while the forces of life - people who maintain some kind of feeling-sensitivity to what is actually going on and who thus long for peace - are, for the most part, scattered, inarticulate, and wooly-minded, overwhelmed by their own impotence and the sheer horror of the global situation.
Death struts about the house while Life cowers in the corner."

Not only that it has benighted champions such as Walter Lohman who champion the Universal Death Machine as the pen-ultimate achievement of humankind - the "triumph" of the West. Or as Margaret Thatcher famously said "there is no alternative"!

And contra Hasbeen, congratulations to Graham for featuring such fine writers as Lynn.

Abbott is the thug who stood over Graham Edwards and bullied him in Parliament - Graham had both his legs blown off in Nam due to an Australian mine.

Abbott is the thug who abused and denigrated Bernie Banton three days before he died of mesothelioma and it was Abbott trying to prevent legislation for further compensation for such sufferers.

Thugs cannot change into decent people.

And for the record, the main parties in this country this year at this election gained less than 70% of the primary vote between them, the Senate vote it was 67% between the two major parties.

Which means over 30% of the country said "neither of the above"" and in many Western Boganstan seats the donkey vote was as high as 13%.

The Left have trouble understanding why their fabricated profile of Abbott, which they themselves had come to believe, hasn't turned out to be true.

What remains is a lie directly generated by the Labor smear machine which failed to find a mark except within the ranks of its own supporters. Now, people like the author actually believe that the lie is true, without any evidence of course, and wonder where that Tony Abbott has gone. The truth - he never existed except in their own propaganda ready minds.

What the author should ask herself is why is she so gullible as to fall for an image generated for political purposes and not facts and ask herself whether she brings these biases into her daily work?

In the current world-situation, the total of the current human population are fragmented into numerous nation-states, and fragmented - as individuals (or "ego-entities") and, also, as smaller collectives (or limited and limiting group-identities) - even within those nation states.
The modern idealization of the individual (and the defining of individuals by means of the limiting-principles of ego-identity and group-identity) is, actually a social and political DEVICE for isolating, fragmenting , and dis-empowering EVERYONE - so that humankind (as a whole) has no collective power.
If everybody is encouraged to be busy focusing on themselves as individuals (or, otherwise, if every individual is dis-empowered by means of the limiting-principles, or separation-devices, of ego-identity and group-identity), then there is no true collective of everybody-all-at-once that can make demands.
Thus, the global promotion of the notion that people should focus on their individual interests and concerns - inclined toward self-indulgent purposes and the illusions of self-fulfillment - is a GLOBAL POWER-GAME that subverts the integrity of the human person and the inherent power and rightness of the totality of humankind.......

..... As a result there are more than seven billion human individuals (and, otherwise, large numbers of competitive and mutually dissociative groups, cultures, traditions, races, religions, corporations, and nation-states) that are, characteristically (and even strategically), out of touch with each other - like dust, and bombs, and petty traffic, all blowing in the wind. That wind steadily blows all prior unity into the bits and pieces of human chaos.

The above paragaphs are taken from an essay titled Everybody-All-At-Once which is introduced here:
http://globalcooperative.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/background-to-the-necessity/#more-103

"Left", "right", please, let's leave the French Revolution behind. However, one thing I have learned is that the word "conservative" always begins with "con". We have the Campbell Newman fiasco in Queensland to prove it.

Whatever lies the left whingers make up about Abbott are always exposed, and he is miles better than Labor's union thugs and thieves, and the greens air heads.

Daffy Duck, like most "progressives" you lambaste identity politics or individualism then allude to some idealised notion of universal harmony that can never be attained.

What does this even mean? "integrity of the human person and the inherent power and rightness of the totality of humankind".

And this? "out of touch with each other".

And this? "That wind steadily blows all prior unity into the bits and pieces of human chaos".

Prior unity? Since when was mankind ever united as one? It's only in religious fables that we find the idea of "unity"; such as that which existed before "The Fall" in Christianity.

It's funny and ironic that, "progressives" see themselves as atheists and blame religion for many evils in the world, but are really carrying on the moral goal of religion.

And the neanderthal conservatives have their heads in the sand as usual.

"Tony Abbott has consistently denied the science of climate change, and his obsession to dismantle the carbon price rests on this personal obsession driven by willful ignorance.
"In three years time the carbon tax will be gone." But will the real problem of global warming be over?"

The writer shows her ignorance. There is no doubting that she is an unquestioning believer in AGW.

On the other hand, Tony Abbott is a realist. He knows that climate change is a natural process that has been going on since Earth's beginning.

There is no empirical scientific evidence that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are a significant driver of climate change. Consequently, there is no scientific nor economic justification for spending billions of dollars on supposedly controlling climate change.

It is perfectly logical to dismantle the carbon price, whether it be the carbon tax or an ETS, especially as it is designed to substantially raise the price of energy but does not result in any measurable impact on climate change.

Given that coal-fired electric power generation is substantially more economical and reliable than the inefficient, costly renewables, wind turbine power and solar power, it would be perfectly logical to dismantle the renewable energy target as well. In this respect, Coalition policy is no better than Labor's. They are both illogical, as they retain the RET whereby they effectively subsidise the promotion of renewables by imposing cost penalties on the coal-fired generators.

neanderthal conservatives have their heads in the sand
Francis,
I wonder if you would say that if you had to support yourself by depending on your competence. My guess is you wouldn't have the strength to lift a hand to the keyboard.

We have an Abbott and a Bishop but will Cardinal Pell enjoy Abbott's ear?

Will Abbott again become a Ministerial Trojan Horse for conservative Catholic policy influences.

No Abbott won't ban abortions but will Medicare support for abortions again come with woman getting a compulsory talking to from religious people supported by Abbott government policy?

Or will Abbott become something more positive - a leader who consults and respects the views of his Ministers and his moderate, overwhelmingly secular mandate?

Individual: nasty! nasty! Perhaps an indication that you feel threatened.

Aristocrat - never mind that the essay Everybody-All-At-Once and the book Not Two Is Peace was written by the most profoundly religious, or more accurately Spiritual Being that has ever appeared on this planet. Read this introduction to His auto-biography for instance:
http://www.kneeoflistening.com/i1-spiritual-genius.html

And his criticism of conventional so-called religion.
http://www.dabase.org/up-1-1.htm
http://www.adidam.org/teaching/aletheon/truth-religion
Plus this profoundly disturbing assessment of what Western "culture" (in particular) in both its secular & so called religious forms is really all about:
http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/Aletheon/ontranscendingtheinsubordinatemind.html
The Signs of the Times
http://www.beezone.com/news.html

Daffy, I've read these critiques before, many times. They're as old as Plato, at least; and have driven philosophical and religious idealism for at least 2 millennia. These should be read with caution and skepticism. They create false hope, and more drastically, political movements that justifies revolutions and death.

I'm not sure there is any longer a left or a right? Just an up or down, or good policy versus bad policy. Sure Tony has his detractors, (myself included) and foibles?
But hey, he is nowhere as devious or deceitful as former PM Rudd?
All of Labor's current troubles, I believe, can be laid at the doorstep of this man and his carefully stage-managed leaking?
Julia Gillard picked the Party's prospects way up, and looked like gaining an unexpected solid win in 2010, until the leaks and the routine undermining started.
This turned a virtually guaranteed win into a rout, only rescued by Julia's consummate negotiating skills.
The fact that the undermining continued, lead to this recent consequence and the very worst slump in Labor's primary vote!
Labor needs time in the political wilderness to fix and clean up its brand; starting one would suggest, in throwing Labor leadership, open to a members ballot.
Such a result would show that Labor has finally started to listen!
And there is no reason why the current deputy, can't continue to act as an interim leader, until the result is finally decided by the RANK AND FILE!
Rhrosty.

Apart from the dubious psychoanalytical angle, this essay has little to offer.

I'm really getting bored with the supposedly left-wing blogosphere railing against the Abbott-Coalition win mainly in terms of climate change, stopping the boats and same-sex marriage (for which its policies are barely distinguishable from the ALP).

I'm at pains to find anything much at all about what this conservative election win might mean for worker rights, the unemployed and underemployed, the working poor, and the welfare state, as well as the Coalition track record on profligate spending to make the upper middle classes even more relaxed and comfortable.

It seems as if all that right-wing disdain for latte-sipping, inner-city lefties might have some justification. I suppose social equality and the class struggle are sooo last century.

Dear Lynn,
In context:

Noting that Melbourne is to grow by 2 million? more people, means more traffic jams, more stress, poorer services ,increase in taxes/cost of living/housing, less bushland and farmland.

In addition it means a massive increase in debt , as everyone of us on average, is consuming more than we are producing.

It is a toxic design problem, with Australians “ asleep at the wheel”.

Last financial year, Australia sold $130 billion worth of assets overseas, masking our parlous financial state.
It is like selling the garage and the 2nd and 3rd bedroom of your house just to pay the bills but still borrowing on top .

Congratulations to the Population Stabilisation Party for their attempt to bring rationality back to politics and for responsibly
taking down their advertising so promptly.

Congratulations to Tony Abbott and I have hope, that he takes these facts into account, in his powerful decision making processes.

Best,

Ralph

Francis,
Did I hit a nerve ?

I reckon that the inability to reimagine Tony Abbott is due to a lack of imagination, or the inability to remove the Rudd tinted glasses.

Phoney's severe limitations will begin to show very shortly. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, now can you!

Put Phoney in the Sports Portfolio where he can hide behind talented sportsmen and women!

To quote Mark Kenny of the SMH:

"Those clinging to the view that the country's new prime minister is some kind of one-dimensional throwback to the 1950s simply haven't been paying attention.

Labor's case against Abbott suffered from this very misconception, which goes a long way to explaining why it has serially underestimated him.

The left's answer to the Abbott challenge so far has been to assume deceit. To posit that Abbott remains every bit the right-wing ideologue but has hidden his real desire to fully deregulate the workplace, wind back advances for women, re-oppress Aborigines and hand over the environment to big oil and big coal.

The idea that the Abbott offered in 2013 was not the ''real Tony'' was not merely soft thinking, it informed various overreaches of the Labor case - from the working assumption that, in the end, Abbott was unelectable to the embarrassing claim in the penultimate week of the campaign that Abbott had enacted a $10 billion fraud on voters."

So to DG and all the left whingers wondering why the sky has fallen on their heads, Please continue to live in your fantasy world. It is the reason your beloved labor/greens alliance was thrashed, and we would like this to continue.

Aristocrat - if you happen to come here again.

You could not possibly have checked out the all-encompassing breadth and depth of Adi Da's Luminous Wisdom Teaching in such a short period. Your response seems to be typical of the knee-jerk instantly dismissive response to Adi Da's Wisdom Teaching that is quite typical of professional philosophers and/or so called theologians.

There is nothing remotely similar to Adi Da's Luminous Wisdom Teaching within the entire corpus of the Western philosophical and religious tradition except perhaps in the kind of contemplative "philosophy" that Plotinus used to practice, and in the writings of Meister Eckhart.

Your choice of pseudonym is quite interesting, it perhaps suggests all kinds of aristocratic associations. That having been said Adi Da's last name (Samraj) means Divine King or Universal Ruler. He once pointed out that one possible way of understanding Who He IS, and the significance of His Appearance here would be to study the Indian Rama tradition. Rama being one of the 10 Vishnu Avatars. At one stage Adi Da used the name Da Kalki, Kalki being the yet-to-come tenth Vishnu Avatar. He stopped using the name because He did want to be associated with any traditional religion, East or West.

Meanwhile it could be said that T S Eliot was giving a prophetic premonition of the necessity for Adi Da's appearance here in the section from his classic poen The Waste Land titled What the Thunder Said.

Individual, Not at all. At my age you learn to take defensive people for what they are....cornered.

Francis,
Well, you're pretty confident for a cornered hanger-on. After all, to be against a conservative Government & defending an incompetent leftie crowd you'd have to be a hanger-on going by the law of averages.

Tony Abbott is a winner

Individual, you have me in stitches. You lose the argument and revert to true form : nastiness. The joke's on you except you cannot see it. Besides, who said I'm a leftie. I'm truly independent and so I voted! Ha! Ha!

Hay Duck, do you have any thoughts of your own, or are you only able to regurgitate what has been written by someone else.

Yes this is something to do when still a student, as it is hard for you to be marked down. However when we leave education we are supposed to start to think for ourselves.

Just keep dropping names all over the place, if you want to be judged as a student. Start producing your own thoughts if you want to be considered an adult.

People who give too much credence to the printed word are inclined to produce rubbish like this article.

"People who give too much credence to the printed word are inclined to produce rubbish like this article."

Or indeed, something along the lines of babble contained in the post before this.....

The "Troggs" (Troglodytes) of the left are metastasizing and accusing real workers of their own failures. Others are Racist but they happily drown brown people for the benefit of their vanity. Others are mean whilst they destroy value with NBN (FTTH), School tin shed debacle ..... (too much to detail). Others aren't caring whilst children are not washed for fear of the power bill. Others brutalise the environment whilst they erect huge bird mincers and sicken communities with infra-sound.

"Progressives" are acolytes of a vain, regressive urge to power invented by a mumbling madman in the British Museum reading room centuries ago. Time for them to modernise, a reformation of the Left is much needed.

dkit,

Over 50% of electors did NOT vote for Abbott in their electorates.

In fact only about 38% of the entire population voted for the Liberal Party.
It's their coalition votes that got them over the line - like the Oakshotte / Windsor alliance. (Despite Abbott claiming that he would never do deals with minority parties).

More people voted for the ALP than for the Liberal Party and more people voted against Abbott's party than for it.

It's like the Queensland LNP getting just under 50% of the votes but picking up 80% of the seats in 2012.

Rache,

What utter BS,

Look at http://vtr.aec.gov.au/ before spouting rubbish.

The coalition is made up of Libs, LNP, Nats, Country liberals, with nearly 46% of the primary vote and 53.4% of the 2pp.

So suck it up.

Australia is the lucky country. We survived the GFC, a catastrophe that has been seen whole nations become financial basket cases. How then was the tsunami of propaganda regarding Australia’s apparent free fall to economic oblivion given substance? It wasn’t. It was just said over and over.

And while even the most welded on LNP supporter senses it too, there remains a psychosis of voluntary naivety among voters.
Tony didn’t win the election, Kevin just lost it. The Labor party destroyed itself from the inside. Craig Emerson dancing like a fool to Horror Movie, could have been singing about Labor at that time.

We saw then Prime Minister Rudd portrayed in the press as Col Clink, the comedic characterization of a Nazi, being justified by the vested beneficiaries of this war time like propaganda, as fair and equal representation. Had the Murdock rags followed with a cartoon of Abbott, Hockey and Pyne as the three stooges, I think many others would have seen this wholly stupid and dangerous use of a monopoly media this was.

And we had Roger Corbett, who didn’t tell us he is a Liberal member when he advised us that Tony is a great human being and Rudd isn’t. It was appalling.

Abbott’s slogans contain literally no vision of the future, just a winding back to the past. It tells us we should be slow, methodical, cautious and scared. There is no courage or humanity in the simplistic slogans of the wooden Tony. The anti-policy and hidden agendas of the LNP is a platform of inertia.

Tony will now slowly and methodically and carefully put Australia in reverse. He will Howardly wind it all back. Abbott’s simplistic slogans of one dimensional change are to be consequentially tested now and the gamble is our democratic right.

“Stop the boats” is not a value or a basis for our identity as a nation. Tony’s “Im fairdinkum” isn't either. We need new leaders with courage and ambition, with respect and integrity, with imagination and an intrinsic sense of fairness. Who do i trust Tony? Not you mate.

'Tony didn’t win the election, Kevin just lost it. ' the mantra of the left. In 2010 the conservatives won but two men elected in conservative seats decided to put self interest and hatred above their electorates. I suppose denial eases the pain of reality for the left.

runner,

".....but two men elected in conservative seats decided to put self interest and hatred above their electorates..."

You should stop your nasty little habit of ascribing "hatred" to people with whom you disagree.

"In 2010 the conservatives won"
Runner, im not left so much as bewildered by the lack of integrity all our politicians have. The Winsor - Oakshot era was a mess. Still, Its was virtually a choice between bad and worse in this recent circus of an election that has seen the Sports and the Motor enthusiasts party join our Senate. Like the true Right, your looking back. 2010 was years ago, who cares. What about 2016.

Shadow Minister,

I was talking about the LIEberal Party, not the coalition.

http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseStateFirstPrefsByParty-17496-NAT.htm

What's the difference between the previous alliance of the ALP with the Independents and the current 4-party coalition anyway - it's always been a marriage of convenience?

You'll have a lot the "suck up" yourself in the next three years as the gloss wears off your idolised fascist rabble.

Roach,

Actually, maths is not your strong point, as the Liberals, the LNP and the country liberals got over 41%, and with the Nats, it is a coalition not an alliance which means that the parties are not like the sell outs ex MPs Oakeshott and Windsor. A really feeble comparison.

"Roach,

Actually, maths is not your strong point..."

And common decency when addressing fellow posters on this site is not your strong point, Shadow Minister.

Her name is Rache.

How about you grow up a bit and cease employing the name-calling tactics of six year-olds when replying to others.

P,

A bit hypocritical today are we? Rache used "the LIEberal Party" and not a peep from you.