Abbott's War on Everything and its Casualties

The title of this issue echoes a satirical take on Australian politics by the irreverent Chaser boys.1 Yet many Coalition policies are no laughing matter. Despite Tony Abbott's invocation of 'Team Australia', the Coalition was at war not only with the usual suspects such as parliamentary Opposition parties, terrorists and drug traffickers, but also with refugees, multiculturalism, the poor and infirm in Australia and overseas2, trade unions, indigenous people, the environment and, indeed, the plethora of advocates for these causes. There seemed to be few Aussies actually on the team apart from the Coalition itself, individuals in the highest income bracket and powerful sections of corporate Australia.This special issue casts a critical eye on the adverse impact of the Abbott Coalition Government policies on the quality of public debate, vulnerable groups, civil society, national security and Australia's international reputation. In the space of just two years it is remarkable how much harm Coalition policies caused and how much opprobrium they attracted, both at home and abroad. Here we focus on the media, social inequality, defence policy, climate change, and refugees as well as immigration more broadly. The ramifications for Australia's standing at the United Nations and for democracy, including the political party base, are also subject to scrutiny.The analyses that follow demonstrate that Coalition policies and their style of implementation share certain dubious traits. On the domestic front the issues, remedies and slogans such as 'stop the boats' and 'axe the tax' were simplified and politicised by the Liberal National Coalition in a bid to ensure that they were elected and retained power. There was a dearth of open and informed debate based on evidence and no attempt to craft bipartisanship, notably in the recourse to wedge politics on climate change. The Abbott-led Coalition exhibited a marked resistance to expert advice and intolerance of criticism from any quarter including inter alia statutory authorities, non-government organisations and the United Nations.A related theme that cut across policy domains was a lack of transparency manifest most prominently in covert negotiation of preferential trade deals, the slippery slope back to war in the Middle East, the secretive Operation Sovereign Borders and the offshore detention regime. When evasion of public accountability was called out, the Abbott Government sought to silence whistleblowers by excoriating them in public and threatening legal action. Such was the fate of concerned staff at detention centres, the former Australian Secret Intelligence Service ASIS operative who exposed Australia's bugging of the East Timor Government, and environmental NGOs protesting poorly regulated developments. Abbott said he was the 'political love child' of John Howard and Bronwyn Bishop; this was certainly evident in his efforts to repress critics. …