a major embarrassment for all of us who hope for an independent and intelligent foreign policy.

James O'Neill,
If Abbott is a major embarrassment in your academic wonder world than what did you consider Rudd & Gilard as ? There wouldn't be a term yet would there ?

I am pretty confident to see the day when you're all forced to back-peddle after a pragmatist Abbott will put the incompetent academic Rudd to shame.

Describes Australia perfectly! We will pay a heavy price for this abject failure in the future.
David G,
You mean the Whitlam, Hawke, Keating & Rudd/Gillard/Rudd Australia.

Individual, surely even you can see that Abbott has made a serious mistake in his dealings with Indonesia?

We aren't discussing the past right now, we are discussing what our new PM is doing about the current crisis.

Have you checked the polls lately?

I was reading the news on Zite' this morning:
"The first Nielsen poll since the September 7 election, published in Fairfax newspapers on Monday, puts the opposition Labor Party ahead of Abbott's Liberal/National coalition by 52 percent to 48 percent.
The Sydney Morning Herald said it was the first time in more than three years that the Labor Party was in front."

Oh dear...

Suseonline,
Only the likes of you say he's made a mistake. The likes of me say let's wait & see what the end result is before condemning everything before it happens. The next President of Indonesia is a Catholic so things will look somewhat different from now.

"The next President of Indonesia is a Catholic so things will look somewhat different from now."

Just who are you talking about here? Purnomo Yusgiantoro? Is he even running? I'm not really knowledgable about the subject, but isn't the candidate for the Golkar party Aburizal Bakrie?

Individual, are you suggesting Abbott communicates better with Catholics?
What, are you expecting them to pray together for the answer to the current crisis?
He certainly gets on well with Pell, that's for sure.

It is certainly not only me who feels this way about Abbott, obviously.
One only needs to read any newspaper re polls to discover that.
Of course, it could also be some sort of 'conspiracy' to oust Abbott, but I don't think we really need a conspiracy for this problem...