Sean Burke Politicom January 5, 2025
Tony Abbott has called out Leftist Canberra bureaucrats and “captured” Cabinet ministers – within his own government – for de-railing his conservative agenda. In an article published in Canada’s National Post newspaper this week, the former Liberal prime minister said members of his own cabinet had been “snowed” by progressive public service activists. Mr Abbott said his government’s policies had been thwarted by a Leftist Canberra establishment from the very beginning, despite achieving a landslide victory in 2013.
“An example of this was the introduction, by ministers who had been captured by bureaucrats, of the social engineering, gender fluidity-encouraging Safe Schools program, which was masquerading as an anti-bullying initiative – even though it had been devised under my [Labor] predecessors,” he wrote.
EXPERTS
Mr Abbott said many of his incoming ministers took the line that “the experts know best” and weren’t sufficiently robust in standing up to officials.
He said President Donald Trump’s administration had experienced a similar fate in its first term.
“Recent conservative governments have tended to be in office but not really in power – either because they lacked an agenda, or because what agenda they had was thwarted by a Leftist establishment.
“Donald Trump was first elected in 2016 on a promise to ‘drain the swamp’, but eventually the swamp got him,” he wrote.
“Trump’s cuts to red tape and tax were enough to create an economic revival but his failure to tame the administrative State – which took over the pandemic response and then united behind a Left-establishment challenger – doomed his first bid for a second term.
The Australian centre-Right Liberal-National Coalition government that I led into office in 2013 started strongly enough by stopping a wave of illegal immigration by small boats and by repealing a carbon tax and a mining tax.
“But Senate obstruction sabotaged its first, economically reforming budget and internal policy differences then led to a revolving door prime ministership.
“If the clock could be turned back, I would have insisted that all my frontbenchers provide a detailed blueprint of what needed to change in order to make a difference in their portfolio area, and explain how their proposed changes reflected our ‘smaller government, bigger citizen’ political instincts.
SNOWED
“I would have insisted that at least a version of their thinking be made public well before an election. That way, the bureaucracy – or at least that section of it still motivated by traditional Westminster ideals of impartial public service – would have had more guidance in policy formation.
“And incoming elected and accountable ministers would have been less susceptible to being ‘snowed’ by unelected and unaccountable officials.
“If I had my time again, I would have worked in advance with like-minded institutes to prepare more detailed plans for key incoming ministers, rather than have them largely directed by the bureaucracy based on sometimes thin pre-election policy announcements.”
1/ Tony Abbott. (courtesy BBC)
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