7. Can't Describe Or Defend His Own Policies
Now if you were mere days out from what people are telling you is now your chance to be leader of an entire nation, you'd think that logic dictates you have some type of plan to showcase why you are Prime Minister material. That to me seems as logical as anything ever mentioned by one Mr Spock of Vulcan. If you want to lead, you at least must lead the masses somewhere. Otherwise you are not an effective leader. Now Tony Abbott has a wonderfully colorful history of gaffes when it comes to his own parties standing on the important issues. But I believe the point I am trying to make can be collectively summed up with this little piece of footage that was shot just 2 days before the federal election. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKi1lGPe0BA Now I am not mentioning the Liberal parties position on internet filtering or any type of conspiracy theory but rather the ineptitude of an organisation in the digital age of the 21st Century which releases a policy on Internet content, defend it, then not even 24 hours later completely trash it, one day out from an election. The only thing that is more shocking to me is that the masses saw this debacle and still believed that this party and it's leader was ready to govern an entire nation. It's been nearly a week since this has all happened and I still can't accept that the Australian people, in which I have been a proud member of for some time (and have defended on many occasions), could be this stupid. Unless you are all completely hypnotized by the size of his ears there is no other explanation other than plain ol' stupidity. A day out from the election and you can't get a single policy together. One as important to modern day society as the internet is? Yes, that makes for great government. Let's add the fact that they didn't actually release any policies until just a few days before the election itself and when they did, it's ambiguous nature that still didn't quite explain how exactly Tony expected to pay for everything and that right there is a disaster simply waiting to happen. Oh wait, it already did. This is a man whose former government brought in a GST, the baby bonus, a free trade agreement that has seemingly had the complete opposite effect to what was guaranteed to us and as Health Minister oversaw the slashing of a billion dollars from health services. And he can govern this great nation of ours? Again, as I said, the only explanation for him being elected is stupidity. But as I mention time and time again in this article, it's not like he didn't have any history when it comes to this and all of his outdated rhetoric. There is a reason he refuses to go back on Australia's main source of political accountability, the ABC's Q & A hosted by award-winning news journalist Tony Jones. Let's look at his last appearance during the 2010 campaign (A whole election ago). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnwjVFvs5SU Did everyone in Australia aside from myself have their minds wiped? Because they all seemed to have forgotten this wonderful piece of political insight when they returned to the polls in 2013. As they did when he announced to us all his unwavering support for a carbon tax. The irony of it all is that since Abbott's austerity mandate includes the privatization of government funded public broadcasting stations like ABC and SBS this show could effectively cease to exist. Did I mention how well Austerity measures are paying off for countries like Greece, Italy and Spain by the way? Yes, this guy has implemented a policy platform based on those which have all but failed in the eyes of the rest of the world and has essentially left entire countries out of money and bankrupted a major currency. And for those who think the carbon tax debacle may have been a one off. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvTc3jdGtSY Real Leadership requires something a little more than a simple NO to everything the party on the opposite side of the gallery at the time proposes. REAL LEADERSHIP is not changing your stance on something as soon as you realize that maybe the rest of the world does not think like you. It requires thoughtful, considerable research and investigation into everything that that the opposite side has to offer, and likewise if you have a policy rebuttal it also needs to be thoroughly researched, investigated and proven as a viable alternative. You just can't throw random opinions out to the people and expect them to stick as effective decision making. Or at least so I thought. And while we are on the subject of policy....