Tony Abbott's Christmas letter

Tony Abbott: Before the egg nog kicked in

Dear [Insert name – MARGIE: Can you help me out here please? Just use last year’s list but cross off Alan, Ray, Karl and that Chris or whatever his bloody name is from Sunrise].

Well, another year – my first full one as Prime Minister of Australia – has passed. Like you, I’m very glad to see the back of it. We’ve had some good times this year. We’ve stopped reporting on the boats (onya Scottie!). We got rid of the carbon tax and the mining tax, which raised no money and no one cared about except Auntie Gina, who sure looked happy at our Easter function. I do love it when she smiles. [PETA, can you work your magic on that last sentence please? Want to convey arms-length affection but can’t think of the right phrasing!].

But really, it’s Jules who’s been the star of our family this year. Or should I say, Julie “Deathstare” Bishop! The kids have even taken to calling her JBish! I guess I’m too much of a ‘daggy Dad’ – or so I keep telling myself – for the kids to give me a cool moniker.

How about all those who reached for their calculators to tally up the gender split when I announced my cabinet, eh? “Only one woman!” they cried. And guess what, she’s the ace in my deck! The best performing woman all year! [PETA: of course except for you. I’m just spit balling here! Feel free to change!]. In fact, she's been so good, I’m DOUBLING the number of women in Cabinet next year. Take that haters! [PETA: I'm trying a bit of pop culture slang here - what do you think?!].

We’ve had quite a few challenges too, I’ll be honest. Poor Joe Hockey has probably had it toughest. In fact, I’ve never seen him so down. I’m thinking of putting one of my old road bikes on chocks and giving it to him for Christmas, because the other night I caught him tucking into a tub of Crème Caramel ice cream with Clive. And it wasn’t a good look, from any perspective.

Joe’s a good lad, he just needs a bit of time away from Mathias Cormann, who I think has become a bad influence. First there was the cigar smoking behind Parliament and then Mattias doing his Arnie impressions, when we’re trying to be the adults in the room! Christopher Pyne has had an awfully rough trot trying to get the young uni bludgers to bankroll their own education. But you know young Christopher! He won’t go down without dragging us all with him! Heh heh heh.  

Anyway, it’s a problem of PR, not policy. We’ve just got to get better at saying bad things, better. It was so much easier when I didn’t have to remember more than three words at a time. Peta’s got me trying this new ‘think-before-speaking-while-still-speaking’ style. So, what that essentially means, is that whilst, some might say…there are questions to answer…I’m not going to be drawn to answer them until I have had the opportunity, that is, the time to reflect, learn and recite verbatim, the key messages that have been approved for me to say.  It’s quite a neat trick! But I haven’t quite got the hang of it yet. I can also repeat a phrase if I get stuck. That is, I can repeat a phrase, repeat a phrase, and hope the minutes tick past so I don’t have to answer any more questions. Gives it more gravitas don’t you think?

Over Christmas, I’ll be spending time working out how we can get off on the right foot in 2015 and by right, I mean left. It’s why I’m thinking of shuffling Malcolm closer to the action (I know, I know, but the lefties love him). I have to hand it to the Silver Fox; he’s done an okay job with the shit sandwich I gave him. The look on his face when I gave the man I credited with inventing the internet the job of reversing all those Telstra trucks from the NBN-promised lands! But the little bugger just kept smiling! Sometimes I just want to shove his good-looking, Prime Ministerial, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth articulate, intelligent smooth talking face into a wall, you know?! [PETA: Please fix! Thought I was back at Uni and got carried away, lol!].

Anyway, we’re Libs, we love each other, no matter what. No knives in backs in our party room. If we have battles – and they’re only ever in the spirit of ideology – we battle with class, like Siamese fighting fish, not backyard bogan brawlers like that mob led by the face of the Faceless Men, Shorten!

So in that positive spirit of Christmas and my new government, I wish you and yours a very happy Christmas. Wherever this finds you, remember, if you’re one of us, you’ll always have a place on Team Australia. And if you’re not, we’ll tow, tow tow your boat, gently back to Indonesian waters! [MARGIE: Please use this or insert other Christmas carol here].

Tony "Your Captain" Abbott,  PM.

Diana Elliott.

Bernie Brookes: Forget taxes, you need more staff

This article originally appeared online at The Age.

Bernie Brookes, Myer CEO. Lucky that's not a wheelchair.

Bernie Brookes, chief executive of Myer, has called it: DisabilityCare will divert millions from Myer’s coffers, because we’ll be coughing up extra at tax time for the levy to fund some of it. And as Bernie told the investor market, the loss of revenue from sales puts a big black mark in the ‘‘negative impact’’ column in next year’s forecasts.  

This of course prompted a militant and frenzied backlash, which caused Mr Brookes to declare DEFCON 1 as he watched the Myer share price start to blink red.

Cue apology and a declaration of support for the NDIS. He was just being ‘‘sensitive to imposts on the consumer by the government” and would like the funding to come out of existing revenue streams, rather than new taxes.

I must admit, my first thought when Julia Gillard announced the levy (“Less than a dollar a day on an average wage!”™) was “Damn it! There goes my Country Road turtleneck with the matching pants for $350!” I was comforted that Bernie and I were on the same page.

Myer seemed to be getting its profits back in the swing after a dismal couple of years, and then Gillard comes along and takes more money from the punters’ pockets, just as the store’s gearing up for the pre/mid/post/all season sale period. Doesn’t this government understand a thing about business?

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It doesn’t matter that you still can’t get served in ‘‘My Store’’, or that three out of the four female change rooms are barricaded closed. Or that when you try to buy something, you stand in a queue long enough to overhear who’s going on their break now, next or never.

I really admire Bernie’s style though, because none of the so-called service assistants in Myer actually work for Myer, so you know, you can’t really complain about MYER’s service. Approaching an ironically named Service Desk clutching an item and asking if it can be found in another size, a customer can expect the following exchange: “Hi. Do you have this in a size X?” Exasperated sigh. “I don’t work for Myer. You’ll have to find a Myer Person. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to refold some jumpers..."

The mystical Myer People are somewhat difficult to come by. And when you do find one and want to return something, they speak in a new language. “That’s a Concession Item.”
“Eh?”
“I don’t work for [Brand]. You’ll have to find a [Brand] Person to put it through.”

Bernie has developed a service strategy that is so convoluted and ineffective he really should get into gaming, because anyone who can design a sales approach where the ‘‘outcome’’ (i.e. a sale) is so elusive would make a killing. Can you imagine? “Holy heck! I just made it to Level 4 (Menswear and luggage) and I’ve picked up 64 Myer One points in the Champagne Bar! The attitude at the merchandise counters nearly killed me, bro!”

I’ve often marvelled at Bernie’s training program, which obviously features a strong emphasis on resilience, because I’ve never come across staff so immune to the irritations of an incessantly ringing phone.

And by the way, what the hell is going to happen to my Myer One Rewards points? Has the government even factored this aspect of the foregone ‘‘reinvestment’’ of my diverted purchase into the equation? I, like so many other Australians, rely on this little piece of plastic money arriving periodically in my mailbox to offset the frustration I have at buying from Myer.

I call it Bernie’s Direct Action response to shockingly underesourced service. If I’m holding that little baby in my hand, it makes it that much easier to stand in a queue with 10 other women clutching clothes that I wait to try on in change rooms strewn with other people’s discarded items.

On current calculations, I would have netted about 245,000 Myer One points for my $350 pants suit, plus a free copy of Emporium magazine. And if the government gets its way and Gillard obtains some ‘‘legacy’’ for her administration, I’m expected to divert this hard-earned into… what, exactly? A scheme designed to help people who are in wheelchairs, who got there because they were born that way or suffered some terrible, non-compensable injury or illness? Give me a break!

Bernie, I’m with you all the way. The sooner we knock down this pesky blip on your profit projections, the better. And we can all get back to doing what we love – shopping in your (My) magnificent store.

Turning a wrecking ball into a land of hope and dreams

The Boss crowd surfing at Rod Laver. Spot him?

It was hard to attend the Bruce Springsteen concert this week without thinking about Wayne Swan. That really did almost kill the mood for me as I walked into a sold-out Rod Laver Arena. Swan penned an infamous essay in The Monthly last year attributing The Boss the dubious honour of having inspired Swan’s politics – something about battlers and Rineharts and Palmers and a mining tax that’s proved to be anything but taxing.

Confronted last week by a journo about his biggest political fan, Springsteen seemed bemused at the suggestion that our Treasurer would build a fiscal policy platform based on   his music. 
“I’m not great with money,” he chuckled.

But listening to Springsteen’s latest album and the title of his current tour, Wrecking Ball, something began to dawn on me. Forget all the old, angsty Darkness on the Edge of Town stuff. It feels like Swan and Julia Gillard may have been sharing a couple of beers and an air guitar while listening to the tracks on this latest album and using them as inspiration.

While Tony Abbott has had an extreme personality makeover, which pretty much involves him saying absolutely nothing while keeping his blue “I’m a decent bloke, trust me” ties on high rotation, Gillard seems to be recasting herself from the object of his misogyny to a “tough, feisty bastard”. When she blurted, “Take your best shot” across the Parliamentary table last week, we all assumed she’d been listening to Pat Benatar to channel the new “feistiness”. But actually, it’s Springsteen who’s her inspiration with his title-track lyrics:

Through the mud and the beer, and the blood and the cheers,

I've seen champions control freak PMs come and go

So if you got the guts mister, yeah if you've got the balls

If you think it's your time, then step to the line, and bring on your wrecking ball

Bring on your wrecking ball

Come on and take your best shot, let me see what you’ve got

It’s there! Right there!  And now with all the pesky business of the challenge that wasn’t over, Swan and Gillard are gearing up to move to track 10 – a soaring belter of a tune called “The Land of Hope and Dreams”. No doubt this was piped through the Canberra halls as she sat down to pick through the remaining loyalists to assemble her new team. The synergies couldn’t be more compelling, with the lyrics:

Grab your ticket and your suitcase

Thunder's Electoral annihilation’s rolling down the tracks

You don't know where you're goin'

But you know you won't be back [To Kevin. Like. Ever.]

Darlin' if you're weary

Lay your head upon my chest

We'll take what who we can carry

And we'll leave the rest [To rot on the backbenches]  

So it’s all aboard the train bound for the promised land – a place where the sunlight streams – presumably an imagined world six months from here where Gillard and Swan will rein supreme over adversity and “faith will be rewarded”.

Swan will be singing sweet nothings into Gillard’s ear, channeling his muse:

Well I will provide for you

Ya and I'll stand by your side

You'll need a good companion now

For this part of your ride

Ya leave behind your sorrows

Ya this day at last [He’s dead! Kev said never again!]

Well tomorrow there'll be sunshine

And all this darkness past

And while the Rudd agitators have been shoved off at the last station, the train’s carriages are flung open to all other people – saints and sinners, losers and winners, whores and gamblers and lost souls, which pretty much offers forgiveness for all other transgressions (take note Craig Thomson!).

So while the Labor gentry shake their heads forlornly at the decaying carcass they see before them and are probably downing cheap bourbon to Springsteen’s wretched “This Depression” or “Swallowed Up (in the Belly of the Whale”), Jules and Swannie are singing obliviously along to “You’ve Got It”:

You've got it in your bones and blood

You're real [Julia] as real ever was

Baby you've got it

And as the ‘Wrecking Ball’ riff continues, Gillard and Swan will be clinging to its repeating lyric: hard times come, hard times go. They’ll just be hoping for no more “unseemly” derailments.

Tony Abbott: Don’t come the raw prawn with me

Tony Abbott keeping it real on THAT 7.30 Report. Ahem.

Another day, another dive into the trenches of language warfare for Tony Abbott.  The latest installment includes his musings on the relative expense of raising subsequent children, following the Government’s decision to prune the $5,000 baby bonus to $3,000 a pop for later offspring.

As Abbott explained to Andrew O’Keefe on Sunrise, the reduction is going to hurt working families™.

“Andrew, the realities are that you need TWO of things!” said Tony. 

“We had two cots! A double stroller! When Margie [polls show it helps to personalise The Wife] and I had two daughters in 15 months, by gee, we needed all the money we could get to install that in-ground pool. You remember the one y’all saw us splashing about happily in before the last election? Yeah Andrew, heh heh, that’s it. Well, pools like that don’t come cheap and certainly not at a paltry 3,000 bucks a kid.

“If the government had some experience in this area, they’d...heh heh...not insist on making such glib comments and realise that the cost of living™ pressures don’t reduce just because you’re breeding like a Rabbott!

 “Please explain,” said Julia Gillard, channeling Pauline Hanson.

“Oh come on GUUUUYS!” pleaded Tones to the media pack. “Really, I mean let’s be frank here. I was simply referring to the fact that I’ve got three daughters and a wife™. If the government wants to take offence to that…if the PM wants me to apologise, well, ok I will. I’m sorry about that.”

Some journos weren’t convinced. “But Tones, you said, ‘If the government had some experience in this area…’. Wasn’t that an implicit dig at Julia’s lack of a child?”

“Oh AS IF!” replied Tony.

But, what did you mean by that then?

“I mean that I’ve got three daughters and a wife™. Did you see us splashing about the pool together? FFS, how much more of this do I have to cop? I LOVE women. My Chief of Staff is a woman. I’m married to a woman. My three daughters are all women! I watch Downtown Abbey! How could I possibly not value the contribution of women?

“Why doesn’t the Handbag Hit Squad™ stop hyperventilating ™ [hysterical women alert!!] and focus on doing the bloody iron- I mean, focus on policy creation!” he concluded, exasperated.

When I was child and tried to get away with things, my parents would address me sternly: “Don’t come the raw prawn with me.” It’s a saying that springs to mind every time I hear Tony Abbott’s increasingly incredulous explanations of his foot-in-mouth gaffes. This week it was the ‘experiential parenting’ issue and the one before that was his infamous ‘dying of shame’ comment, following hot on the heels of his good mate Alan Jones’ remarks about the PM’s late father. There have been many others, which Annabel Crabb has expertly and eloquently discussed today in her column.

All these entirely innocent, if unfortunately conceived, ramblings – from a Rhodes scholar?

Raw prawn, anyone?