CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Former Prime Minister turned unemployable baby boomer, Tony Abbott, has today announced that he will be taking a time of paid leave from his obligations to his cycling mates and the cafes of Manly.
This follows the news that his most valued constituent, The Duke Of Edinburgh, has passed away peacefully at the age of 99.
Tony Abbott has been known for many years to hold a special place in his heart for the Queen’s old husband, and is believed to have a similar penchant for mildly racist and sexist jokes.
In fact, Abbott loved the Duke so much that he even let his anglophilic obsession with the Royal Family destroy his career.
It was 2015 when Abbott faced his first leadership spill as Prime Minister, when his own party decided that his detached privilege was becoming a little too much for the average voter to look past.
After working tirelessly to get Australia to back the aristocratic titles of ‘Sir’ and ‘Lady’ – in an effort to flatter billionaires and footballers, and hopefully retire with something a bit more fancy than ‘mister’ – then Prime Minister Abbott ruined everything with his first recommendation for the honour.
On 26 January – Australia’s national day – Mr Abbott announced he had nominated Queen Elizabeth II’s husband to receive the knighthood.
He had said then that the Duke of Edinburgh’s life of “service and dedication” should be honoured. The Queen awarded the knighthood in April.
The fact that this decision came several months before the death of the iconic Australian cricket commentator Richie Benaud was not a good look, as most Australians would have been able to stomach the return of this wannabe-English honours system if the first cab off the ranks was ‘Sir Richie’.
However, this was not to be the case, because Tony Abbott thought the Queen’s husband, who is a British citizen of Greek heritage, was the most deserving recipient for this explicitly Australian title.
Like most of his catastrophic decisions as Prime Minister, Tony Abbott has been unable to look back at this time and recognised his error of judgement – and still cannot believe that so few Australians loved Prince Philip as much as him.
It’s for this reason that Tony Abbott is today taking some time off with that new paid personal leave programme that seems to be only available to Liberal part politicians.
“We lost a good Australian today” says Tony Abbott.
