Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has sought to take a much less macho approach in his language than his predecessor. This has provoked a rather extraordinary response from Tony Abbott and his acolytes. In August 2014, the former head of ASIO, David Irvine, said security agencies were determined to reach out to the Muslim community and pronounced he was "utterly outraged" by a newspaper headline that trumpeted the West would be "fighting Islam for 100 years".

Good judgment

His comments were part of a long line of public reminders from the security agencies that people – but particularly our political leaders – needed to apply good judgement to their commentary about national security. Yet, in February, Tony Abbott declared that he wished more Muslim leaders would describe Islam as a religion of peace and mean it (our italics).

In June, Tony Abbott exploited a photo opportunity when he visited ASIO's headquarters to talk about the national security situation, replete with maps of terror "hotspots". He indignantly defended ASIO against Labor accusations that the filming of the maps was a security breach.

"I would have thought that you would have had more respect for the people running our national security," the Prime Minister flung across the table at the Opposition

Tony Abbott should just go away. Alex Ellinghausen

"Members opposite are impugning the professionalism of ASIO," he said.

Throughout the slow and self-inflicted death of Abbott's prime ministership, there were many more reports that security agencies were concerned about the language being used by the government – and others – about the Muslim community, because it was making it harder for them to build vital relationships in those communities needed to alert them to possible threats.


And it wasn't just security agencies. For example, Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells – a crucial government link with Muslim communities – has repeatedly made similar warnings.

Malcolm Turnbull has gone out of his way to change the language he uses about the Australian Muslim community.

Rod Clement

"Everything I say on this subject is carefully calculated in the light of the advice I receive from the Australian Federal Police and from ASIO," the Prime Minister said last week.

But now it seems the people feeling the most marginalised are not the Muslim communities of Australia as much as Tony Abbott and some of his less attractive acolytes. Now that he is no longer prime minister, the views of the intelligence agencies aren't quite so legitimate, and their motives much more open to question.

Slapping down Abbott

Apparently, when ASIO's Duncan Lewis now warns of the need for moderate language, he is doing it as a slight to Tony Abbott, not because it may reflect his assessments of national security. The Sunday Telegraph reported on the weekend that Mr Lewis had warned that fuelling a backlash against Muslims was a "dangerous" threat to national security and weakened his organisation's ability to stop terrorist attacks.

The Australian's Greg Sheridan, reported on Thursday that the interview was "widely seen as a slap down of ­former prime minister Tony ­Abbott".

Oh really? We all forgot: it's all about Tony, isn't it? Bugger national security, or national interest.


Ominous sign: Prime Minister Tony Abbott walks past The Reject Shop on his way for a media visit to a butcher shop in Kippax in June. Alex Ellinghausen

The same people who rail about the threats from Islam take spectacular liberties – against official advice – with our national interest, purely in support of furthering their political agenda of damaging the new prime minister. Lewis has apparently been quietly ringing around Coalition MPs who have been urging Islam to 'reform itself' telling them their comments risked becoming a danger to national security.

Sheridan reported that the Prime Minister's office had been "involved in arranging these phone calls", despite a flat and categorical denial from the PMO that this was the case. This assertion was the basis for a claimed "unprecedented intervention in politics by a head of the spy agency". (Someone hasn't been reading the official history of ASIO, have they?)

"A number of Liberals are angry at what they see as an improper ­intervention by the ASIO head into legitimate political issues," Sheridan reported. So a government official charged with protecting national security is not able to have a quiet word with people making inflammatory statements and alerting them to the potential consequences for the rest of us of those statements.

Imagine if this was a controversy in the economic realm. And instead of our national security, it was a matter of talking down the Australian economy at a time of particular peril that was at stake. History tells us that the perpetrators would be jumped on – publicly – from a great height.

But economics isn't really Tony Abbott's thing, is it?

Abbott said in an interview last week that he still had "a contribution to make to public life".

The trouble is that, every time he sticks his head up, he only gives cause for voters to reflect on just what a miserable and destructive contribution that has been; to look on his prime ministership as an embarrassing aberration; and wish as 2015 draws to a close that the man would just go away.



