Douglas Murray Douglas Murray

In defence of Tony Abbott

Tony Abbott (Photo: Getty)

You sometimes wonder whether we live in an adult country anymore. For the last two days the broadcast media has been obsessing about whether Tony Abbott is a fit and proper person to be a trade envoy for the United Kingdom. Since he is a former Prime Minister of Australia, a distinguished statesman and a great friend of the United Kingdom you might have thought he would be eminently suited for the role.

But Kay Burley of the Sky News network, among others, has announced that Abbott is (in her eyes) guilty of wrong-think. You don’t need to see the clips. You could come up with the list yourself. You know the drill.

We are told that Abbott is a ‘homophobe’ and ‘misogynist’. He is furthermore a ‘climate change denier’. They haven’t said ‘transphobe’ yet, but I expect they’ll get there. They might even try the ‘r’ word if they’re feeling brave enough today.

Former colleagues of Abbott’s like Peta Credlin have come to his defence. People have tried to point out that very few people were in favour of gay marriage a decade ago so the fact that a Catholic like Abbott wasn’t a supporter of it ahead of time (including ahead of many gay groups) isn’t such a surprise. Elsewhere people have pointed out that Abbott has a gay sister and attended her wedding a short while back. I must say that whenever that sort of defence is wheeled out I only have one thought: what if Abbott hadn’t been lucky enough to have a lesbian sister? What if chance had made him an only child or one of those unfortunate indefensible types who can’t produce a gay sibling in their own defence?

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