Tony Abbott the working reporter, the bloke who paid his bills punching a keyboard, would have laughed in the face of Paul Keating or Bob Hawke if they'd gone whining to their favoured pets in the tame media about not getting the benefit of the doubt, about the press not seeing their interests as being in the national interest. Tony Abbott the journalist would have touched them up good and proper just for the cheek of it.

Tony Abbott the Prime Minister, though? He makes Hawke's constant calls for the waaaaaambulance because some journo, usually from the ABC was mean to him … well, he makes Hawke look like John Howard.

You could cut Howard's fingers off and poke him in the eye with them, he wouldn't blink. He wouldn't give you the bloody satisfaction of it. John Howard might have looked like a brylcreemed super nerd but he was a hard nut who could absorb inhuman amounts of damage without flinching, because he'd learnt that to show weakness was to lose. Spectacularly.

Tony Abbott is no John Howard. His petulant waaaaaambulance call on talkback radio yesterday, whining about the ABC – not individual journalists mind you, the whole institution, thousands of hard working Australians – all of them, his puerile and disgraceful lie that they do not act in the national interest?

That would have made John Howard shudder. Not because Howard loved the ABC. No Prime Minister since Menzies has. But because Howard knew that, as soon as you start complaining, you're done. You look like a loser. You are a loser. You don't look like a bloke who's got the ticker for the hard work.