Mood:
accident proneTopic: election Oz 2007
Picture: Image from Fairfax press early 2005 of Minister Tony Abbott in the middle and older ex girlfriend left and her son, both as it happens unrelated to self promoting punching machine Tony Abbott.
We read about Tony Abbott's colourful history every so often.
His official profile is here as federal Minister for Health
http://www.health.gov.au/internet/ministers/publishing.nsf/Content/health-profile-ta-profile.htm
and a more breezy one here:
http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/aboutTony.aspx
We used to see pictures of muscular Abbott in boxer shorts and gloves (if we can find an image it will be posted) who won a University "blue" for the sport, but he seems to have moved on to cycling in middle age:
http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/polliepedal/default.aspx
For lack of picture of pugilist Abbott we note these quotes:
"MICHAEL BOWERS: You seem to be a man who's shaped in your political career by some of your experiences in earlier life, you're very big on sports and health. You were a boxer and you played rugby in your earlier career. Is it unfair, because the cartoonists will latch onto something like the boxing and they just don't let it go?
TONY ABBOTT: The boxing and the cauliflower ears. I could have my ears surgically removed and they'd say, "Just like Chopper", I suppose. But, look, it's life, and if it's done with style and a bit of humour, great. I could go into a Buddhist monastery, renounce red meat, assume celibacy once again and they'd still go on about that kind of stuff. "
3rd Dec 2006 Talking Pictures segment http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/content/2006/s1802883.htm
and again here dated around 2002 in a story called The Rise and Rise of Tony Abbott, presented by heavy hitter John Lyons on Sunday Ch9 programme:
TONY ABBOTT - FEDERAL WORKPLACE RELATIONS MINISTER:
TONY ABBOTT: I was very, very nervous, as you can imagine. It was my first formal bout. The Blues boxing match was locked 4-4 with the heavyweight to decide it. The Oxford Town Hall was absolutely packed to the rafters with very excited people who, I'm afraid, had been in many cases drinking rather heavily for quite some time. So I got into the ring, determined to hit my opponent harder and more often than he could possibly hit me. I went out like a whirling dervish, kept hitting him again and again and again with just a left, right, succession. And then I got him this magnificent left upper cut and he seemed to go up in the air, across the ring and almost through the ropes. As I said, I could hardly believe it then and I can still hardly believe it. But it certainly made for a spectacular end to the Blue's boxing match that year. http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/cover_stories/transcript_882.asp
Real echoes of the 1978 National Lampoon's Animal House
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_House
Abbott was also in a fairly bizarre and frankly embarrassing media frenzy March 2005 about a child out of wedlock which he felt he had to fess up to, but DNA tests proved wasn't his progeny anyway:
Too much information! Plain embarrassing intrusin into personal irrelevancy for this observer. Sometimes I do believe there is such a thing as too much publicity even for a politician. So undignified.
But very important to the more conservative religous amongst our community who vote on moral questions.
More recently Abbott, aka "The Mad Monk" to his rivals, has been preaching to the Opposition Leader about of all things political opportunism in religious communities, as per this report in Rudd’s home state of Queensland with a busy evangelical voter cohort
Abbott raps Rudd on God
January 27th 2007
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21130056-953,00.html
Abbott's words jarr with impertinence and hypocricy about oppportunism because some would say he indulged his own hunger for political PR at the expense of other private citizens unlucky enough to have been involved with him in a younger life. Here he is talking up his life story June 2005 on on ABC
http://www.abc.net.au/sundayprofile/stories/s1389511.htm
Opportunism? Gratuitous? Of course it is, because a politician needs publicity like a junkie needs drugs.
And here is the ALP political payback for attacking Rudd via John Cain, ALP 'Premier Past' of the State of Victoria in the press today:
For reasons below, this writer tends to agree with Cain.
Also of original significance in this post when SAM kicked off our website for 2007 coincidentally we had a friendly interview with a public school teacher colleague Peter Woof who he says, and we believe him, was punched by Tony Abbott in either 1976 or 1978 in the thick of student power politics at Sydney University. Abbott is known as a sporting pugilist in publicity shots and Woof has some disturbing things to say about legal/financial duress forcing him to withdraw a case he took to the Glebe Magistrates Court against Abbott.
This perhaps was around the same time Abbott's colleague Peter Costello the current Federal Treasurer was famously pictured bruised and battered in student politics in Melbourne. Seems Abbott was dispensing the blow up here in Sydney with some one paying the big legal protection as he went about his business of enforcement of right wing values, according to Woof.
The full report is here, just click on the date at top right or go to the relevant topic at right:
Monday, 8 January 2007
Why did student activist now minister Tony Abbott punch Peter Woof?
Mood: quizzical
Topic: election Oz 2007
Peter Woof is in regular contact by email.
Declaration: This writer is a 'lapsed' Catholic but still quite sympathetic to the New Testament view of things, whose family is from regional Victoria in part and was depressingly dedicated to the Santamaria/The Movement view of conservative politics. No wonder SAM's editor became a zealous greenie instead. The author is not a member of any political party.
