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"TONY ABBOTT"
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The searchers : five rebels, their dream of a different Britain, and their many enemies
In the great revolutionary year of 1968, Tony Benn was a respectable Labour minister in his forties, and he was restless. While new social movements were shaking up Britain and much of the world, Westminster politics seemed stuck. It was time, he decided, for a different approach. Over the next half century, the radicalized Benn helped forge a new left in Britain. He was joined by four other politicians, who would become comrades, collaborators and rivals: Ken Livingstone, John McDonnell, Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn. For Andy Beckett, the story of these admired and loathed political explorers - both their sudden breakthroughs and long stretches in the wilderness - is the untold story of British politics in modern times.
Book
Battleground
Tony Abbott came to office lauded as the most effective leader of the opposition since Whitlam, but the signs of an imperfect transition to the prime ministership would soon emerge. Why did Abbott fail to grow into the job to which he had aspired for decades?Backbenchers complained about the leader's office, the lack of access, front benchers leaked about cabinet processes to the media. His long apprenticeship in religion, journalism and political life prepared him for neither the mundane business of people management nor the commanding heights of national leadership.Public goodwill evaporated after a tough first budget the government failed to explain. Inside the Liberal party individual ambitions and a succession of poor polls produced increasing concern that the next election was lost. As a result, the horse named self-interest won yet again.
eBook
Australia's 2015 Defence White Paper: Seeking Strategic Opportunities in Southeast Asia to Help Manage China's Peaceful Rise
Australia's new government is committed to delivering the next defence white paper in 2015. The two previous white papers took a predominantly risk-management approach to Southeast Asia, generally ignored the strategic opportunities in the region, treated it as a stand-alone region largely unrelated to developments in East Asia and failed to link Australia's policies in Southeast Asia with the broader goal of helping to ensure greater strategic stability in Asia by putting constraints on Chinese assertiveness and encouraging its peaceful rise. After offering a summary of recent Australian defence thinking on Southeast Asia, this paper outlines why managing China is the key variable when it comes to strategic stability in the region. It then examines how China's strategy and behaviour can be shaped and influenced by events and relationships in Southeast Asia, and offers some suggestions as to the role Australia can seek to play in Southeast Asia that relates to Canberra's China-focused objectives and strategic stability in Asia more broadly. If that can be achieved in the 2015 defence white paper, Australia — which is often criticized for being preoccupied primarily with managing the relationship with its superpower ally the United States — will demonstrate to itself and Asia that its heavy reliance on the ANZUS treaty is no barrier to strategic creativity in Asia.
Journal Article
Analysing the Rhetoric of Islam Needs Reforming: Tony Abbott’s Political Discourse in Response to Terrorism in Australia
One of the significant effects of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York was the politics of the US-led war on terror encompassing secularism and calls for Islamic reformation. The political discourse of war on terror was not limited to the Americas but was witnessed in other Western nations, such as Australia. The discourse of “Islam needs reforming” by the Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, in response to the Lindt Café siege (labelled as “Islamic terrorism”) tacitly associates Islam with terrorism and represents Muslims negatively to the wider Australian society. This paper with the research question of “How does ‘Islam needs reforming’ discourse perpetuate Islamophobia?” carried out critical discourse analysis on the selected speeches of Tony Abbott in response to the Lindt Café siege in 2014 to find out the context and implications of Abbott’s discourse in relation to calls for Islamic revolution. The study found that Abbott through the example of al-Sisi’s (Egypt’s president) calls for Islamic reformation forwarded his stance of the need for change in Islam to counter terrorism. Therefore, the present paper argues that the calls for Islamic reformation in response to terrorism can associate Islam with terrorism, thus, perpetuating Islamophobia.
Journal Article
Leadership in political opposition
Despite recent events in Australian federal politics, the function of opposition is not actually to destroy governments. It should be regarded as a normally functioning part of parliamentary democracy, as important as government itself. Democracy is grounded in the belief that since the foundation is the people themselves, no selected, partial government can be good enough to rule in perpetuity. This does indeed imply the need to change governments from time to time, but in orderly fashion, as one government is replaced by a team already groomed for office and experienced, from the desks of 'shadow ministers', in dealing with the problems of the time. As human, therefore fallible, institutions, susceptible to the blandishments of power, governments must be kept under constant scrutiny, and the main function of opposition, besides preparing for office, is to be vigilant over all that government does, in the name of the people.
Journal Article
Commentary on Abbott government and the media
In the aftermath of the 2013 election at which the Tony Abbott-led Liberal-National Coalition secured a substantial majority in the lower house, some of the Labor vanquished were quick to point to the media as a contributor to the outcome. News Corporation - the publishers of 'The Australian', 'The Herald Sun' and the 'Daily Telegraph' - and New South Wales-based talk-back radio hosts figured prominently in Labor claims of unfair, personality-based reporting and commentary especially in the period in which Julia Gillard was Labor leader and prime minister. Accordingly, the success of Tony Abbott was seen as being due in no small way to the obsession of News Corporation with Labor's internal tensions over the leadership, and the constant vicious personal hounding of Julia Gillard by broadcasters like Alan Jones and Ray Hadley (by no means an exhaustive list).
Journal Article