Tony Abbott, who has spent the past couple of days baiting Malcolm Turnbull in what now passes for the privacy of the Coalition party room, thought on Wednesday it might be time to bait him in public.



Turnbull had intimated to reporters the day before he was just too busy to campaign publicly during the postal ballot on same-sex marriage that his conservative Praetorian Guard – Peter Dutton and Mathias Cormann – had delivered to him as the necessary course of action to hold a fractious Coalition together.

Too busy being a Strong Leader™.

Abbott, these days, having been dispossessed of his leadership, is not too busy to campaign. In fact that’s all he does. Now he specialises in destruction.

His talents in the barn-burning field are peerless. So far he’s managed to destroy three governments, including, memorably, his own; and he has eyes, locked, grimly, on the routing of a fourth.

Lacking the convenience of his regular 2GB spot, with the locker room bonhomie and silky encouragements of Ray and Ben, Tony strode to the doors of Parliament House on Wednesday morning to say N-O to same-sex marriage.

Hardly a shock. For Abbott, holding back the scourge of progressivism is a vocation, a holy crusade, a righteous undertaking.

Elevating it to a calling took that little extra rhetorical flourish of saying no to political correctness. Voting no would not only stop the legalisation of same-sex marriage, it would help to stop political correctness in its tracks.

You could almost see him rehearsing that insight in the bathroom mirror. You bet you are. You bet I am.

Abbott, through his contribution to the debate, invited onlookers, implicitly, to contrast a leashed prime minister, the grey-faced diplomat-in-chief, with a warrior, a deposed man of the people.

Contrast, if you will, the man of direct speech and clear thought, the man of soundbites, boldly rallying his angry, future-hating disciples, with the man who is now reduced to telling reporters he is a Strong Leader™, and saying he’s too busy to campaign for a cause he’s long supported.

Abbott, through this new adventurism, is chasing not only the satisfaction of a cause he can sink his teeth into. He’s chasing the thing that constantly eludes him – status elevation, equivalency with the man who replaced him.

Abbott wants the voters to see him as the prime minister in exile, the true prophet of disaffection, and Turnbull to dance to his tune, like a limp puppet on a string.

Sometimes Abbott’s status-enhancing objective will be get Malcolm to concede. At other times, it will be get Malcolm to fight.

With the contest that close and personal, the atmosphere around postcode 2600 felt febrile, and fetid. The parliament lapsed through the day into full hothouse mode.

After Abbott’s early morning declaration of war on the present and the future, a small circus erupted around the One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts, who always thought he was Australian, despite the fact he may once have been British, because, #feelings.

I think, therefore I am.

Over in another part of the building, Malcolm Turnbull lectured energy retailers about the benefits of price transparency, and they lectured him about his vacuum of an energy policy. Check, meet mate.

And while all the jostling happened, the great daily sprint to the zero sum – insurrection, humanity and hope broke out all around the place.

Abbott’s sister, Christine Forster, thought she might take the strategic opportunity of impinging on the brotherly soundbite. Forster shared some solid reasons to vote yes in the looming postal plebiscite.

If you value mutual respect: vote yes. If you want all Australians to be equal: vote yes. If you believe in free speech: vote yes #auspol — Christine Forster (@resourcefultype) August 8, 2017

If this is about the people: vote yes #marriageequality #auspol — Christine Forster (@resourcefultype) August 9, 2017

In the Senate, Penny Wong took the opportunity to make a speech which she was at pains to deliver while looking straight across at Mathias Cormann – one of the chief architects of the ridiculous postal plebiscite.

Wong, a gay parent with two small kids, sought direct eye contact as she told the chamber Cormann was dead wrong when he said a postal plebiscite could be a unifying moment for the country.

“I don’t think – I hope – that people watching me debate would think that I’m a shrinking violet. And I know what a hard debate’s like,” Labor’s Senate leader said.

“But I tell you: have a read of some of the things which are said about us and our families and then come back here and tell us this is a unifying moment. The Australian Christian Lobby described our children as the stolen generation.



“We love our children, and I object – as does every person who cares about children and as do all those same-sex couples in this country who have kids – to being told that our children are a stolen generation.

“You talk about unifying moments? That’s not a unifying moment. It’s exposing our children to that kind of hatred”.

Wong then turned her critique on a prime minister apparently unprepared to fight his own corner on marriage equality, or to stand up assertively for people who needed a champion.

“Maybe he should stand up for some of the people who don’t have a voice, because we know the sort of debate that is already there. Let me say, for many children in same-sex-couple-parented families and for many young LGBTI kids, this ain’t a respectful debate already.”

Cormann, who is the most loyal of government soldiers, who delivers the line and never breaks cover, looked down, briefly, to his lap, in what seemed like obvious discomfort.

Later he stuck to his guns. This could and would be a respectful conversation, Cormann insisted, but he referenced Wong’s piercing moral clarity and his own brief, human, reaction to it by noting their “very good personal relationship”.

For what it was worth, Cormann took Wong’s cue and said it would be important to conduct the same-sex marriage debate with “courtesy and respect”.

That’s if we get that far.

Marriage equality advocates also stood up and fought their corner.

If Australia’s parliamentary representatives were intent on this disposition to be vacant, to outsource their fundamental responsibilities to the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the most random of data surveys, then someone needed to be the adult in the room.

The long-time marriage equality campaigner Rodney Croome gathered the television cameras, and promptly moved the theatre of battle down the parliamentary forecourt, past the old parliament, through the old rose garden, past the Treasury and the National Portrait Gallery, to the high court of Australia.

Perhaps the justices could wake Australian politics from its trance.

“We are announcing that we will be filing in the high court to have the high court strike down the postal plebiscite in the hope that we can then proceed to the resolution of this issue in a way that should always have been dealt with – and that is a free vote in parliament,” Croome said.