Macho Tony Abbott and the women who ruled him

Reverence for one more woman, in a strange way, helped bring Abbott undone. It was his attitude to the Queen. I ask my readers to cast their mind back to some of their Australia Day memories. Flags fly, people cheer, barbecues are held. It's a huge popular demonstration. I usually walk around Circular Quay in Sydney and wander through the city.

Thousands of people want to be seen as taking part in the day and its celebration of being Aussie. It's extremely inclusive; racial, religious, age, and other differences notwithstanding. It's for everyone. On this of all days Abbott chose to make the Duke of Edinburgh a knight. Sir Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh?

It made no sense. It was one action always mentioned as showing he was out of touch. "So stupid it could be fatal", said one commentator not known as hostile to the government. Abbott's strange loyalty to the monarchy had made him forget that his constituency was here, not in Windsor Castle.

Many discussions of masculinity, my own included, have pointed out that masculinity has its paradoxes. The big cop who tickles his dog's tummy. The powerful bodybuilder who fusses over shaving his chest. The beefy Samoan sitting next to me in a truck in Apia with a flower in his hair. The local tough guy, all muscles and tatts, who I meet in a lift in Bangkok going out for a night with a lady-boy. A pair of beefed-up muscle boys walking hand in hand down Oxford Street in Sydney. A man who swims in the surf, rides a bike as well as the best, and rules a country as Prime Minister who defers to the judgment of significant women ? He's just one more example.