Imagine what could have been…
Imagine for a moment if Tony Abbott was still Prime Minister and was striding the world stage with Donald Trump.
Tony calling out the “climate cult” and Trump slapping down the “prophets of doom” – what a team they would be.
We got a glimpse of what might have been with Abbott’s speech to the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC last week and Trump’s speech to the woke folk elite at Davos in Switzerland. Both speeches are worth watching if you have the time.
In answer to a question from The Sydney Morning Herald’s North American correspondent, Matthew Knott, Abbott said climate change had taken on “an almost religious nature” and rejected the idea it was responsible for the bushfires.
"I'm not one of those people who sees the current bushfires as confirmation of all we've ever feared about the changing climate," Abbott told a high-powered audience of academics and world media.
"I see the current bushfires as the sort of thing that we are always going to be prone to in a country such as ours - a land of droughts and flooding rains as the poet [Dorothea Mackellar] said all those years back.”
What a breath of fresh air.
Meanwhile Trump, speaking before world leaders, billionaires and teenage climate high priestess Greta Thunberg, told them what they did not want to hear.
Channelling our own Senator Matt Canavan, Trump, like Matt, called the bluff of the alarmists.
“Alarmists always demand the same thing: absolute power to dominate, transform and control every aspect of our lives. We will never let radical socialists destroy our economy, wreck our country or eradicate our liberty,” Trump said. Yep, we know they are commies.
Trump said those predicting climate apocalypse were “the heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune tellers” and said that “alarmists” had been wrong over the decades when predicting population crisis, mass starvation or the end of oil.
“This is not a time for pessimism. This is a time for optimism,” Trump said.
Meanwhile back in Washington DC, Abbott praised Trump as a politician who was not afraid to lead and was doing what he said he would do.
"He might seem crass or intemperate - that doesn't mean he's not the best possible president,” Abbott said.
"The one thing you can't say about Trump is that he's been shy to lead”
That this needs to be said is a sad indictment on current politicians.
"The singular feature of Donald Trump is that he has supreme self-confidence in himself and his country and that frankly was the missing ingredient in the previous presidency,” Abbott said.
Feel the burn, Barak.
Abbott even said he had come to see the value of Trump’s use of Twitter.
"Given officialdom's tendency to fudge, maybe an unfiltered US president is what the world needs.
"His style sometimes grates, but he has been a very good president.
"Maybe it's been overtaken by Trump derangement syndrome, but for the first time in years the main narrative has not been one of American decline.”
Abbot said that for the first time mainstream Americans felt like they had their man in Washington, not the elites’ man in the White House.
"It's refreshing actually that Trump doesn't talk about what America can't do, but what it can do,” Abbott said, endorsing Trump for a second term.
Sadly, Mr Abbott was unjustly cut down by the selfish Malcolm Turnbull and Liberal “bedwetters”. Sure, he made mistakes but what leader has not.
But we got a glimpse last week of two statesmen taking mainstream values up to the elites on the world stage.
Scott Morrison has similarly shown a willingness to push back on the global elites and the extreme aspects of warming alarmism.
But for a moment, mainstream Australians have had a chance to ponder what might have been.
At least Australia has been given a second chance with Morrison.
But there is no doubt Tony’s post-politics voice in the public debate is one we need to hear more.
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