The PERSONAL being POLITICAL with Good-Wife Margie Abbott

The wife of  the Liberal Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott felt she could stand up for her man and tell the women of Australia, her husband was no misogynist - he lived and loved in a family of women and his Chief of Staff was also a strong woman! 

Peta Credlin, Chief of Staff (for Tony Abbott)Liberal Coalition Leader)

If anything, she said, he is a FEMINIST! Big mistake Margie Abbott.

The man who was meant to be Prime Minister last election who has since called the woman who won and the government she leads as illegitimate, is a Feminist?

Petra Credlin must be really concerned about her boss' poor approval polling with women. First he had to quell his religious utterances and now the wife and daughters are paraded out - by their own volition; They  love him. And he loves them.

Abbott, the 'mad-monk' is the well known Roman Catholic, Conservative who believes in the institutions of Patriarchy.. As Health Minister in the Howard Government he used all his might against those elected grand-daughters of Eve to deny access to RU486 which would provide another choice in women's reproductive lives(and their economic autonomy).

Good-Wife Abbott,  perhaps inspired by the U.S. sickly spousal presentations for the next President wants

Australian women to see what a terrific husband and father he is. Nothing about his policies. The kind of things which would improve the lives of women and children were not on her agenda to discuss with the women voters of Australia.

Perhaps Tony and Margie don't have much pillow talk on policies. Abbott's confessor, Cardinal Pell may have more of an idea, and had some influence. What a gift to the nation if we had Pell with the keys to the Papal Suite and his loyal parishioner, the keys to The Lodge.

see Abbott and Cardinal George Pell at the Power Index.

One must remain vigilant to the closeness of Church and State. It is a well known fact that Abbott's ideology was nourished by his mentor B.A. Santamaria, and his current mates include his ex-Parliamentary Secretary  Cori Barnardi MP who was made to leave his office after homophobic comments.

I've had a flash-back to themes of Frank Hardy's 1950 book, which blended fact and fiction of the political and religious battles fought including in the world of  literature. Many books were banned that challenged the status quo,  or the hypocracy of those with power, but it is from this period where Tony Abbott was reared -  anti-workers, anti-communist/socialist, traditional gender roles, hierarchy of respectable men in churches and states.

"The Book that tore Australia Apart"

POWER WITHOUT GLORY by Frank Hardy (1950)

He has two female Bishops(Bronwyn and Julie) on his front bench but they hold no threat to the man who would be P.M. 

http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/judging-abbott-at-face-value-but-which-one/373/

What would Good-Wife Margie Abbott know about her husbands deep feelings of women who are his political competitors? I guess, in such a 24/7 occupation members of parliament and staffers see more of Tony than she and their daughters have in all the years they have been married!

His arch nemesis is Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

                                

I remember watching his body language every time he sat next to the P.M. at official functions. It seemed excruciating. Julia wasn't a bloke who beat him in a fair fight of an election. His ego and authority had been humiliated as an alpha-male politician. (this is my lay-person Freudian superficial theory).

The last few weeks have become heightened in sexist outbursts with the shock-jock Alan Jones saying how Australian women in power were destroying the joint, followed by a vicious attack by the Opposition Leader in Parliament repeating his Sydney mate's war-cry from 2GB: the word to describe the P.M as shameful, trying to press it into the psyche of the electorate as they get the dinner ready.

Nothing is really different from the abuse women copped outside Westminster 350 years ago!

As I flit between researching and writing a historical novel set in the English Civil War and Commonwealth period I can't help but think I'm living in a parallel universe! The fear in the minds of men, where women share power in Parliament produced abuse and satire from the revolutionary printing press.

The women of London, influenced by the ideas and principles of the Levellers activism, suggested that yes men should be able to vote and so ought women, and they marched and petitioned and banged on the doors of Whitehall. 

In the House of Lords and Commons the M.P's  foresaw the living nightmare of the Sydney arch-conservatives and co-horts,Tony Abbott and Alan Jones - Government led by women!

Did you know that our Australian Westminster system of  Government owes it's development from the English Civil Wars of 1641-9? As Geoffrey Robertson says in his introduction to the Levellers - the Putney Debates -

It is an abiding irony that the United Kingdom...should be so reluctant to acknowledge the most significant part of it's political development where it established universal values of the supremacy of parliament, the independence of the judiciary, comparative freedom of speech and toleration of different forms of religious worship, the abolition of torture and of executive courts.
The principles of representative government obviously did not include those of women (until they threw rocks in shop windows and threw themselves in front of the Royal horse, 300 years later.)

Please nourish my historical novel in progress at the following link:

"LOVE IN AN ENGLISH REPUBLIC" at the following link:
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