Quote:Tony Abbott is trying to improve his image with many women. But as I found out when I met him recently, no makeover can erase his track record of public statements and actions, especially on issues of clear gender sensitivity like abortion.
So will the Abbott re-invention as friend of all women be successful? My experience suggests no, at least not with those familiar with history.
Mixed messages
The defining political event of 2012 was Julia Gillard’s now world-famous “misogyny speech” to opposition leader Tony Abbott
It might not be enough to save her politically but it did enormous amounts of damage to her opponent. He knows it and is furiously working to repair his public image in the eyes of women.
If a recent episode of 60 Minutes is anything to go by, we’re set to see a lot more of the Tony Abbott “nice bloke” makeover in the lead up to the election in an attempt to undo the harm.
In the interview with Liz Hayes, Abbott’s lesbian sister Chris, his wife and daughters gathered to spruik his metrosexual qualities.
But the women of Team Abbott are selling a mixed message. On one hand, he’s definitely a changed man. On the other, he’s been misunderstood all along. And OK, Abbott’s said some nasty things in the past. But who in politics hasn’t?
Rewriting history doesn’t work with those who remember
Abbott is a champion of the mixed message too. He told Hayes he has “changed” and he’d like to think that he has “grown”. But as for the accusations of misogyny and sexism made by Gillard in parliament? They were not “fair” and not “true” of him. Not ever.
Confused? I certainly am, and I recently had the opportunity to discuss the issues with him in person, something the vast majority of voters will never do.
I witnessed the attempted impromptu makeover by Abbott in the flesh. Last month Madison Magazine invited me, along with Miranda Devine and Sarah Murdoch, to meet with Abbott and discuss political issues relevant to women. How could I decline? Of particular interest to me is abortion and reproductive health, and this is likely to be why I was invited.
Abbott was polite and keen to talk and gave every impression of being interested in what I had to say. But when I noted he was the first politician from a major party since the 1970s to break bipartisan consensus and politicise abortion, he denied he had intended to do any such thing.
From that point in the conversation I witnessed a fascinating, determined retelling of history by Abbott, along with a perfectly executed case of selective political amnesia.
The past is a foreign country, Tony Abbott does things differently there
It is worth recalling what Tony Abbott has undeniably said and done when it comes abortion as a political issue.
In March 2004, as Health Minister Abbott told students at the University of Adelaide that abortion was the “easy way out” and an “objectively grave matter” that has been “reduced to a question of the mother’s convenience”.
Tony Abbott as health minister in 2003. His comments from that era have not been forgotten by many women. AAP/Dean Lewins
He then pursued an anti-abortion debate in the media, referring to Australia’s abortion “epidemic”, encouraging other anti-abortion MPs such as Christopher Pyne, before being silenced by the pro-RU486 outcome in the parliament in 2006. In that parliamentary debate, Abbott described the abortion rate as “this generation’s legacy of unutterable shame”.
After being overlooked for the Liberal leadership in 2007, Abbott began the slow process of reworking his image, especially on abortion.
In his 2009 book Battlelines and elsewhere Abbott claimed he gave the Adelaide University speech after a constituent at an Australian Christian Lobby conference asked him how he felt about funding 75,000 abortions a year on Medicare.
At the recent Madison forum I criticised Abbott for politicising abortion. One glance at US political life demonstrates to how toxic life becomes for women once abortion becomes a vote-grabber. He responded by stating he would never have broached the issue in public, were it not for the question posed to him about Medicare that he felt he had to answer.
Who does Abbott think he is kidding?
No denying the record
Abbott has a long history of agitating on abortion in unnecessarily inflammatory language. In 2002, well before he was responsible for Medicare, Abbott addressed the Centre for Independent Studies describing abortion on demand as “part of a tendency to treat human beings as disposable throw-away-when-they’re-not-convenient-commodities.”
In that speech Abbott suggested that abortion might be relevant to a “serious debate” about the low birth rate. When I mentioned this 2002 speech to Abbott as evidence of his ongoing personal interest in abortion, above and beyond his role as health minister, he suggested I must have been confused about the year he delivered it. I wasn’t.
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