Illustration: Rocco Fazzari Nine days after this action, he died from his injuries. "Lance Corporal Kirby's gallantry is remarkable," Abbott pointed out, "because that was a time when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were not even counted in the census. Yet despite so many slights and mistreatments, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people served our country with distinction. Returning home, they were denied the same entitlements as their mates. The door was shut on every day but Anzac Day." The Parliament, said Abbott, owes it to Lance Corporal Kirby "and his brothers, to build the Australia that they fought for, that they hoped in, and that they shaped, which is both free and fair." He pledged to pursue the bipartisan policies to close the gap between Aboriginal living conditions and those of the rest of the people, and to work towards constitutional recognition of the first Australians too. And he ended with a fine and rousing sentiment befitting a great country and a unifying leader: "We must strive and strive again to ensure that the First Australians never again feel like outcasts in their own country and if we do; our Parliament is at its best, our country is at its best and we are at our best." The same man, a month later, endorsed the WA government's decision to withdraw services from 150 remote communities by saying: "What we can't do is endlessly subsidise lifestyle choices if those lifestyle choices are not conducive to the kind of full participation in Australian society that everyone should have," Abbott told ABC Radio in the West Australian mining town of Kalgoorlie. Even the man whose policy he was endorsing, the Liberal premier of WA, Colin Barnett, regretted Abbott's "unfortunate" choice of words. One of the men Abbott had appointed to advise him on Aboriginal policy, Noel Pearson, said he was "bitterly disappointed to hear this deranged debate go on in the sub- standard manner in which it's being conducted."

Another, Warren Mundine, described it as "a complete misconception of what it is…It is not about a lifestyle, it is not like retiring and moving for a sea change. It is about thousands of years' connection, their religious beliefs and the essence of who they are." Under fire, Abbott did not recant or apologise but pressed on for two days, undoing a decade of good work that he had invested in relations with Aboriginal Australia. One of his cabinet ministers privately described his leader's words as appearing to be "calculated to offend". The whole episode was eminently avoidable, as his deputy, Julie Bishop, showed when she was asked about the policy two days later. It was " a matter for the state government, and they are responsible for the allocation of services and clearly there are practical challenges for providing services in remote communities, nothing new in that, but I will leave that for the state government to determine." With Muslim Australia, too, Abbott can be a unifying leader. On one of the most testing days of his prime ministership, when Man Haron Monis took hostages in Martin Place and ordered them to hold aloft an Arabic flag last December, Abbott rose to the occasion as a national leader in a crisis. He did not seek to inflame anger or resentment but to assure and unite. He isolated Monis, describing the incident as the "sick fantasy of a deeply disturbed individual", rather than seeking to portray him as any sort of representative Muslim. He congratulated Sydneysiders for responding with "typical Australian decency and generosity" and he defined this as including "all the different communities which make up this rich and multicultural city." And then he explicitly disentangled Monis from the Muslim community and the Islamic religion: "It is very wrong to identify the death cult that the individual concerned tried to associate himself with; it is very wrong to identify that death cult with any community or with any faith. The phrase that I like to refer to, uttered by my friend, Prime Minister Najib of Malaysia, of the ISIL death cult: it's against God, it's against religion, it's against humanity." We can only hope that the Prime Minister can recover his higher and better self.

"Finally," the prime minister concluded, "let me just say that we have seen in the worst of times the best of people". We might have said the same of Abbott himself. In some earlier moments, Abbott had played the harmful politics of division, singling out the burqa as a just cause for limiting freedoms in Australia, for instance. But now, in a crisis, Abbott had risen from "tribal chief to national leader", his own words to describe the transformation that an opposition leader must undergo to become a serious prime minister. Yet the same man, three months later, delivered a scripted, studied slur on the leaders of Australia's Muslim community. It was a statement, once again, that appeared calculated to offend. In his so-called national security statement last month, Abbott said: "I've often heard Western leaders describe Islam as a religion of peace. I wish more Muslim leaders would say that more often and mean it." The head of the Arab Council of Australia, Randa Kattan, said at the time that the comments were completely unhelpful. "I'm really fired up about this, I couldn't sleep last night…It is counterproductive and extremely insulting to many of us who have been working really hard on this. It just inflames sentiments that are bordering on hatred and racism." And the president of the Lebanese Muslim Association, Samier Dandan, described the comments as "incredibly reckless" and "politically opportunistic". The former head of ASIO, David Irvine, had described the Muslim community as Australia's greatest asset in managing the risks of extremism and terrorism. "We should thank them, not blame them," he said. With Muslim Australia as with Aboriginal Australia, Abbott was not solving any problem but knowingly sowing discord. Even with asylum seeker, Abbott has shown glimpses of empathy. As John Howard's health minister Abbott said he had "enormous sympathy" for refugees. He has said that Australia was "blessed" to have received the refugee Frank Lowy, one of the country's outstanding citizens on any measure.

Yet in the past few weeks Abbott has waged a furious assault on anyone daring to speak in defence of refugees if it involves criticism of his government. President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, have been assailed for their work. Why is Abbott reverting? Why is the prime minister abandoning his unique responsibility as the leader of what he himself has described as "one of the world's most successful multicultural countries" to become a serial abuser of one minority after another? Why has he gone from unifier to divider? Is it as simple as the explanation offered by James Walter, a political psychologist at Monash University? "His default position is aggression. When everything is relatively smooth, he can put that behind him to some extent. But he's probably feeling insecure" in the month since his own party attempted to declare the leadership vacant. "In these circumstances, the aggression comes readily to the surface," posits Walter. No, it's not. Abbott is pursuing a two-pronged political program. On one, he is going to great lengths to placate the great mass of the electorate. Abbott is discarding signature policies such as his attempted Medicare co-payment and his attempted paid parental leave scheme. He is trying desperately to sedate an irate electorate. On the other, he is conducting serial provocations of Australia's minorities, Aboriginal, Muslim, and refugee. The first is a transparent effort to improve his standing in the opinion polls to try to extend his prime ministership. The second is an attempt to arouse the passions of his right-wing support base, the group he sees as essential to his support base inside his party room. In trying to forestall a leadership contest against Malcolm Turnbull, Abbott has only two advantages. Incumbency and the loyalty of the right-wingers in his party room. But even if James Walter is right and this is merely a series of temper tantrums by a leader under pressure, it's a very sorry state of affairs that the prime minister should be dividing the country. Whether by default or by design, Abbott is disqualifying himself from the leadership of a successful country of immigrants from every nation, race and religion whose future depends on unity and harmony. A couple of years ago, Abbott offered what he called "a personal confession". Said the then opposition leader, "with Geoffrey Blainey, I used to worry that multiculturalism could leave us a nation of tribes. But I was wrong and I've changed my mind."

He explained that he had discovered that "the strongest supporters of the Crown in our constitution included indigenous people and newcomers who had embraced it as part of embracing Australia. At least for them, the Crown was not a historical relic but a continuously evolving symbol of our unity above party politics." We can only hope that the Prime Minister can recover his higher and better self. Because in the past month or so, Tony Abbott has been developing into a continuously dismaying symbol of disunity, a demoniser in the service of the basest of politics. Peter Hartcher is the political editor