My mother told me

Now that I have nearly reached the end of this lets look at the present prime minister of this country I realise that I have only accomplished half of my mother's injunctions. I have attempted to tell the truth as I see it but have failed to say anything nice about the man. Why is that?

If I look at his predecessors over the last 30 years all of whom I have criticised for one thing or another it might help explain the absence of praise for this man Abbott.

Hawke was able to build a consensus and bring people along with him. Keating was an excellent parliamentary performer and he left us the Redfern speech "we took the children… we brought the grog". Howard bought back many guns after the Port Arthur massacre and got Indonesia out of East Timor. Rudd saw Howard and his "work choices" off at a time when no one else had a chance in hell of doing so and he did say "sorry" to the stolen generations. Gillard was able to operate in a hung parliament and still get important legislation through.

Abbott the cultural warrior, a budgie smuggling exhibitionist, with all the subtlety of a bare fisted pugilist, a flag waving pseudo nationalist nutter who would not look out of place with the pro-Russian Ukraine separatists, a debater not an orator, in order to make a point he often resorts to dumbed down repetition. One only has look at he footage on him in his Borderforce leather jacket to understand that here is a egotist looking for a fight. His need for exercised induced endorphins to keep himself under control leaves me with the sense that the man is stark raving mad.