Abbott should be gently and firmly removed from office before it is too late, says Lyn Bender Psychologist Lyn Bender analyses the increasingly erratic behaviour of Prime Minister Tony Abbott from a Freudian perspective.
TONY ABBOTT is like the man who has stepped in what a dog left
behind, yet is mystified by the rank odour of everything he approaches.
The Prime Minister of Freudian slips
is in full denial. He refuses to accept that he is massively
and irreversibly on the nose with both his party and the electorate.
As his supporters desert him in droves, he rages against the dying of
the light, refusing to comprehend his own folly. It has the makings of a
Greek tragedy except that Abbott obdurately refuses to face the truth
regarding his own psychopathic folly. But then, truth never was Tony's forte.
How might psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud have viewed Abbott and the attempted coup?
Probably as evidence of denial, and the spilling out of repressed and suppressed impulses and ideas.
In other words, Tony Abbott is in massively out of touch, and “Team Australia” just couldn’t hold it in any more.
For those who think that politics is the art of pretence and suppression, it's all sorted now. Tony Abbott and his minders would have us believe that it was just a little blip on the smooth sea of their faux unity.
We are not like our opponents – that socialist ALP rabble – torn by
internal conflict. We are not a soap opera. We are mature grownups.
In other words, if you have to keep insisting on something it's probably denial.
And the Abbott Government is full to the brim with denial. I have survived, says Tony, and so let’s have no more talk of spills.
Freudian slips
are the mistakes that reveal the (often not so well) hidden truth. They
are the gaffes that betray real and unconscious intent and thoughts.
“In the same way that psycho-analysis makes use of dream
interpretation, it also profits by the study of the numerous little
slips and mistakes which people make — symptomatic actions, as they are
called [...] I have pointed out that these phenomena are not accidental,
that they require more than physiological explanations, that they have a
meaning and can be interpreted, and that one is justified in inferring
from them the presence of restrained or repressed impulses and
intentions”. [Freud, An Autobiographical Study (1925)]
Critics might say that a slip is just a slip, but Freud would see this as a surface or shallow explanation.
Some research now supports his views of the unconscious.
Freud wrote:
"Excitement, absent-mindedness and disturbances of attention will
clearly help us very little toward an explanation. They are only empty phrases, screens behind which we must not let ourselves be prevented from having a look.''
Abbott is now massively and, arguably, insanely in denial. Staring uncomprehendingly at the burgeoning dislike he is inciting, he fights on. Like Monty Python’s Black Knight, Abbott denies defeat even as he is dismembered.
His popularity keeps descending and, at last count, Labor leader Bill Shorten had a 48 to 30 per cent advantage over Abbott as preferred prime minister.
Yet with 40 per cent of his own party voting for anyone but Abbott in the spill, he boasted afterwards:
"I am a fighter. I know how to beat Labor Party leaders. I beat
Kevin Rudd, I beat Julia Gillard, I can beat Bill Shorten as well."
"All of us are determined to lift our game and the fundamental
point I make is that the solution to all of these things is good
Government, and good Government starts today."
Sigmund says: My Government has been total crap until now.
"I want to make this very simple point: we are not the Labor
Party, we are not the Labor Party and we are not going to repeat the
chaos and the instability of the Labor years."
Sigmund says: We don’t have a clue who we are, but we are not them and anything bad is all their fault.
Sigmund says: Australia is a British colony and I am a proud Englishman; I prefer the last century – or, better still, the one before – and want to go back there.
"... as many of us know,women are particularly focused on the
household budget and the repeal of the carbon tax means a $550-a-year
benefit for the average family."
Sigmund says: Women's
place is in the home – shopping, cooking and ironing their man's shirts
– while men go out and run the world. And stuff the environment.
"It is my hope that I could be, not just a prime minister, but a
prime minister for Aboriginal Affairs. The first I imagine that we have
ever had."
On the morning of the spill, Abbott ignored the "Freedom Summit"
of Indigenous people camped outside Parliament – as did the media – as
he strode off to fight the spill. He paid no attention to the Aboriginal grandmothers protesting increasing rates of child removal.
Sigmund says: I said what I said to become prime minister — I'd sell my arse to be PM! The fate of Indigenous people means nothing to me in comparison to remaining in power. Their problems are not my problem.
7. No guilt about children in detention
Responding angrily to a damning Human Rights Commission report on the damage done by Australia to children in detention, Abbott declared:
"I reckon that the Human Rights Commission ought to be sending a
note of congratulations to Scott Morrison saying 'Well done mate because
your actions have been very good for the human rights and the human
flourishing of thousands of people'."
When asked if he felt any guilt over the horrifying findings in the
AHRC report, including the heartbreaking pictures of young children in
locked confinement, Abbott replied: "None whatsoever."
In fact, said Abbott, it was the Human Rights Commission that should be "ashamed of itself".
Sigmund says: Thus spake the narcissist, in deep denial, projecting his feelings of guilt and shame.
Repressed denied impulses can break out, in spite of attempts to suppress them. That is why Tony Abbott keeps accidentally showing his true colours despite all his protestations.
The Liberal Party can now barely contain its rebellion, even as it
protests its unity. The Party doesn't need a facelift — it needs a heart
transplant, writes columnist Waleed Aly.
Tony Abbott has revealed himself to be self-centred, cruel, mean, petty and concerned only with his own survival.
But he now claims to have changed, overnight. He has declared that the spill motion experience has been a chastening experience and that he has learned and is listening.
But his subsequent actions – such as blaming the Opposition for a jobs “holocaust” and using parliamentary privilege to politicise and prejudice an alleged terror attack investigation – show this up for the lie that, of course, it was always going to be:
Is it any surprise at all he has been blasted as the most ‘incompetent politician of any industrialised democracy’ by an influential U.S. think tank?
The prognosis?
Given past and present form, and without years of intensive therapy, the likelihood of, or capacity for, significant change or improvement in Abbott is close to zero.
However, in his state, the damage he could cause before he leaves
office is almost incalculable. He needs to be firmly and carefully
removed from office before it is too late.
Tony Abbott during a visit to Indonesia (image from news,com.au)
American think tank the Council on Foreign Relations made the headlines in Australia this week when their scathing report on Tony Abbott, aptly titled ‘Tony Abbott has to go‘ filtered its way to our mainstream media.
Now we notice that the Americans are not the only ones who are
writing about horror year Tony Abbott and his government are enduring.
Tony Abbott has been hitting the headlines – front page headlines, no
less – in Indonesia too.
The kicker is today’s story in the Jakarta Globe, ‘Australian PM Under Fresh Fire After Horror Week‘ with Indonesians reading about of our Prime Minister’s ‘success’ since declaring the start of good government.
It does not read well.
“Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott came under fire on Friday over
controversial comments on the arrest of two terror suspects and for
referring to a “holocaust” of job losses, capping a horror week” they
write.
“Abbott began the first parliamentary week of the year fighting for
his job after poor poll ratings, a series of policy backflips and
perceived high-handed decision making saw MPs from his conservative
Liberal Party force a confidence vote”.
“He survived the “spill” motion on Monday and promised “good
government” from that point on with the 39 of the 102 Liberal
parliamentarians who tried to oust him grudgingly agreeing to give the
unpopular leader a second chance”.
It was noticed that “. . . he has stumbled since, handing his
detractors more ammunition”. I’m wondering if our local mainstream media
makes the same conclusion.
But possibly the most damning of their condemnation refers to Tony Abbott’s comments on the trial of two terror suspects.
“On Friday, he was forced to defend himself after revealing in
parliament a day earlier the contents of a video allegedly made by two
men charged with terrorism offenses.
Lawyers said the detail and his remark that it was “monstrous
extremism”, made under parliamentary privilege, could prejudice a future
trial of Omar Al-Kutobi, 24, and Mohammad Kiad, 25″.
In other Indonesian news, Kirsty Wynn’s article ‘When Will Abbott Get Started on Good Governance?‘ – also in the Jakarta Globe – echoes the sentiments, in part, of those expressed in the now famous commentary from the Council on Foreign Relations.
Wynn writes that:
There is no doubt that Abbott’s ferocity made him an
exceptional opposition leader. Time after time he managed to shred Julia
Gillard and Kevin Rudd amid the Labor Party ruckus, in turn elevating
his status from unknown Sydney MP to a figure appreciated because of his
absolute conviction. It could also be said that this is our blowback,
as the heavy-handed tact we once lauded has now become irksome. The
infallible strength that inspired the public during the last election
has created a PM who refuses to see his own fallibility.
Abbott must now learn that as PM he is no longer a crusader. It is
not expected (or desirable, at the least) for him to continue to
violently strike down challenges. As a PM he is expected to navigate
them, work in consultation with his own party, at the minimum, and
produce outcomes that reflect assurances made pre-election but also in
tune with more recent happenings.
The desire to return to surplus was a poignant example of this.
Voters indeed agreed pre-election that returning to surplus would be
advantageous, but the brute force of the measures put forth by the
Abbott government managed to isolate large segments of the public. It
was as if Abbott had been asked by the public to unlock a door (to
surplus, for argument’s sake), only for him to instead kick the door
down.
There remain plenty of problems-cum-opportunities for the PM to show
his potential to solving issues constructively — instead of obliterating
them. Most prominently, thorns exist over chief of staff Peta Credlin’s
influence over Abbott. Her role is increasingly seen by colleagues as
being subversive, and for most, too encompassing. In light of recent
events, this issue could be a means for Abbott to showcase a new
approach.
The benefit of democracy is that Abbott remains under no illusions
now. He has been called out by his own staff and made to walk the plank.
He has been saved this time, but will need more than luck to continue.
Restraint and tact are traits underappreciated by most. It’s high time Abbott rises to the challenge and train in both.
In just one week, the debacles surrounding Tony Abbott’s prime
ministership have received wide coverage in America and Indonesia. At
this rate, Tony Abbott will be making rest-of-world headlines within the
fortnight.
Abbott’s address to the Press Club was a “please don’t sack me speech”.
He was begging for his job. It was not about popularity, but competency
he said. The problem is just that. He has proven to be incompetent.
“I promise to be more consultative, more collegiate”. Mark Reilly
pointed out that he had made that promise 15 times in the last five
years.
Joe Hockey suggests he should retain his job because the country
needs stability. By that reckoning we should retain an incompetent
leader because stability is more important. Get your head around that.
In Australia, over the past few years we have had a revolving door
attitude towards leadership. The Labor party was thrown out, not because
of its policies, or its governance but simply because of instability of
leadership. The Gillard-Rudd farce became too much for the Australian
public.
It has to be said that John Howard was unpopular but respected. His longevity of tenure proves it.
Tony Abbott, said to be the best opposition leader ever (something I
have never been able to fathom) sought in his time of office to belittle
the office of Prime Minister on a day-to-day basis.
The current undermining of Abbott’s leadership, which will continue
even if he retains his job, was eminently predictable. Words written to
describe his character, or lack of it, reach Biblical proportion.
His history is that of an incompetent lying bastard, a gutter
pugilist politician with no redeeming features. One who openly displays
his disdain for others with vile hate filled utterances. A person of a
bygone era who retains a love for the country in which he was born, over
and above, the one he now leads. He is a Luddite without any
comprehension of technology and science and the benefits to mankind they
will bring. He governs for those who have and not for those who have
not. His attitude to equality in terms of social values is legendary.
The fact that his party elected him in the first place, given that
all this was known, reflects as much on the party as it does on him.
What sort of a leader whose leadership has been so
abysmal-so condemned in the court of public approval, would then suggest
that the good performance of colleagues is as a result of his splendid
captaincy? That’s arrogance of the highest order.
“It takes a good captain to help all the players of a team to excel”, he said.
What sort of a leader in the face of all this would openly suggest that he is good at his job and needed to skite about it more?
What sort of a leader would insult voters by suggesting that the electorate only elected Labor Governments in “a fit of absentmindedness”?
What sort of a leader would say this and then do the opposite?
“It is an absolute principle of democracy that
governments should not and must not say one thing before an election and
do the opposite afterwards. Nothing could be more calculated to bring
our democracy into disrepute and alienate the citizenry of Australia
from their government than if governments were to establish by precedent
that they could say one thing before an election and do the opposite
afterwards.”
What sort of leader would with spellbinding, cringe
worthy ignorance call social media “graffiti on a wall” while his
government spends 4.3 mil on finding out the extent of its influence.
Seriously, bullshitting is bad enough but when someone believes their own, that is intellectual dishonesty.
Leadership is a combination of traits that etch the outlines of a
life and grow over time. They govern moral choices and demonstrate
empathy toward others. In the recipe of good leadership there are many
ingredients. Few leaders have all of them due to our human fallibility.
However there are some ingredients that are of necessity.
So if I were electing a leader I would have a check list of the
following. Dogged determination, credibility, respect, truthfulness,
vision, a positive attitude, trust, delegation skills, confidence,
creativeness and ideas, honesty, the ability to inspire, intuition, good
communication skills, morality and ethics.
The question then arises which, if any of these attributes did the Liberal Parliamentary Party did they believe Tony Abbott had.
Australian voters might like to also reflect on that.
A just released Essential Poll asked the following question:
Q. Which of the following describe your opinion of the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott?
Out of touch with ordinary people 72% +6
Arrogant 65% +4
Narrow-minded 63% +2
Erratic 60% +8
Hard working 58% -4
Superficial 55% +1
Intolerant 54% +1
Intelligent 50% -1
Aggressive 45% -4
Good in a crisis 36% -6
Understands the problems facing Australia 35% -5
A capable leader 34% -9
More honest than most politicians 30% –
Trustworthy 27% -3
Visionary 22% -5
On the evidence it is hard to believe that there are those who actually support him.
Julia Gillard may have been unpopular but competent she was. On the other hand Tony Abbott is neither.
Now the Liberal Party is caught between a rock and a hard place. On
the one hand it retains an unpopular characterless Prime Minister with
no redeeming features because they need an image of stability. On the
other, his lack of competence for the job will create instability and
mean one term only.
All because they didn’t question his qualifications for leadership.
They and we might like to do the same in the future. The catalyst for
all this has been Abbotts love of all things English. His knighthood
obsession has become his own personal Knightmare.
Given the choice between stability and competency I would settle on the latter because competency brings about stability.
Today Tony Abbott addressed the National Press Club with what his
colleagues were describing as a make or break speech. It was his chance
to outline his plan for the future and to make his pitch as to why he
is the best man to lead us into that future.
He then proceeded to spend the majority of the speech talking about
the “Rudd/Gillard/Rudd catastrophe”. He obviously has a different idea
of what future means than I do, or is it that that is all Tony can do?
His speech was just a collection of all the trite phrases we have
heard him repeat ad nauseum. He persisted with counting on his fingers
that same old stuff about axing taxes, stopping boats and building the
roads of the 21st century.
He promised, for the umpteenth time, to be a more “consultative
collegial government”. He also backed off from his captain’s picks of
Paid Parental Leave and deciding who gets knighthoods. On PPL he said
he had listened to the Productivity Commission and his colleagues – pity
it took him five years to do so.
But perhaps the most interesting line for me was when he said
“I hope that in 2015 we will see a much more honest national conversation.”
And so say all of us.
Unfortunately that hope lasted about two seconds as he told us that
Labor had left him with a $667 billion debt. As we have pointed out
countless times on these pages, the only place that number appears is in
Hockey’s MYEFO from December 2013 and it was a projection for ten
years’ time based on Coalition spending and revenue cutting decisions.
When asked about his broken pre-election promises Tony said that it
was necessary because Labor had lied about the real state of the books.
“We went into the campaign believing the deficit was $18 billion.
When we saw the books it was actually $48 billion so Labor left a $30
billion deficit black hole”.
Except Chris Bowen and Penny Wong produced an economic update in
early August showing the deficit to be $30 billion, a figure backed up a
couple of weeks later by Treasury and Finance in PEFO. Apparently Tony
didn’t read those documents, or chooses to ignore them.
The changes in projected deficits were once again due to Coalition decisions
Tony boasted that his government had created hundreds of thousands of
jobs. When it was pointed out to him that there are about 70,000 more
people unemployed than we he came to office he completely ignored the
question. I don’t think Tony realises that with population growth of
364,900 in 2013-14, we need over 30,000 new jobs per month just to keep
up. From December 2013 to December 2014 employed persons rose by 1.4% while unemployed persons rose by 7.7%
Tony didn’t mention Medicare’s future or higher education reforms or
Indigenous recognition. He ignored domestic violence despite Australian
of the Year Rosie Batty’s impassioned plea for action. And his much
anticipated family package degenerated into the government would have a
“better childcare policy” and “consult widely”.
Sigmund says: I am totally fixated at the anal stage.
