Perth: Tony Abbott had learned to box only a few months before that night in 1982 when he climbed into the ring for the deciding bout in the Oxford vs Cambridge annual collegiate boxing contest. And he faced a taller opponent with a longer reach.
There are different accounts as to whether the match lasted 30 or 45 seconds. There was no disputing the winner.
“Tony came out like a thrashing machine, hit the guy and it was all over,” said Phil Crowe, Abbott’s rugby captain from his days at the University of Sydney and the University of Oxford, who was in the crowd that night. “He just charged and the other guy had no chance.”
The grit Abbott showed is about to propel him to the top job in a $1.5 trillion Australian economy, where growth slowed to 2.5 per cent in the year through March 31. Those who know him and have chronicled his career say he’s become more polished and pragmatic even as a combative streak in sports and politics has helped him weather attacks on his intellectual heft and faith-driven views, leading the opposition for two polls in a row.
“When he became opposition leader, the conventional wisdom was that he didn’t have the right temperament to last, but his self-restraint and control enabled him to be very effective,” said Wayne Errington, a political analyst at the University of Adelaide and co-author of a biography of former coalition Prime Minister John Howard. “While that doesn’t mean he will be a great prime minister, he’s at least proven to be a pragmatist.”
Abbott’s Liberal-National coalition has an eight-point lead in the polls over Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Labor party ahead of Saturday’s vote. The coalition needs to add only four lower house seats to end six years in opposition. As prime minister, Abbott would have to shift from being a critic to laying out a platform for Australia, and negotiating with a potentially hostile parliament on his pledges to cut spending and taxes.
In recent years Abbott, a practicing Catholic, has also been the target of criticism for his comments about women, which saw him accused in 2012 of misogyny by Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard.
Born in 1957 in London to an English father and Australian mother, Abbott and his family sailed for Sydney in 1960. His father, Dick, a dentist, later told The Australian newspaper that when his wife, Fay, was asked about young Tony’s future, she replied, “He’ll either be the pope or prime minister.”
Abbott attended Catholic schools in Sydney’s affluent suburbs and was elected president of the University of Sydney’s Students’ Representative Council, graduating with a degree in law and economics.
“He was a good student all round, certainly in the top bracket,” said John McGee, a Sydney-based businessman who met Abbott at the university and remains a close friend. “I saw a leader of people and a uniter of people.”
To fulfill his promises, Abbott may have to deal with smaller parties such as the Greens, strong advocates of the carbon mechanism, in the upper house. He reportedly called climate change “absolute crap” in 2009; Greens leader Christine Milne has portrayed Abbott as out of touch, a “hyper-masculine style of male politician.”
Abbott has spoken of his conservative views that reflect his family background and lean on the Liberal tenets of supporting business and deregulation. He’s cited his early admiration of B.A. Santamaria, a Catholic-Australian anti-communist who held traditional views on the role of women in family life and opposed unrestrained capitalism.
Abbott’s views have led him to make comments about women that political critics say reflects a deeper misogyny.
He wrote in the Sydney University student council’s newspaper that “it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons,” according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
In 2010, talking about the effects of Labor’s carbon pricing system, he said, “What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it’s going to go up in price.”
Gillard accused Abbott of making sexist comments, telling parliament in 2012, “If he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia,” Abbott “needs a mirror.” In June, Gillard was forced out by Rudd in a vote by Labor lawmakers.
Asked by reporters last month to identify the attributes of Liberal candidate Fiona Scott, high on Abbott’s list was “sex appeal.” At the same time he’s promised a paid parental leave system under which a new parent would receive as much as A$75,000 over six months.
“He’s probably unchanged at heart,” said Eva Cox, founder of the Women’s Economic Think Tank and author of “Leading Women.” “He’s betrayed some old-fashioned, conventional attitudes toward the roles of women, but he’s worked out that they do play a large role in the workplace and as voters.”
Abbott is married with three adult daughters, two of whom have featured heavily in his campaign.
“He’s more conservative than me, but so what?,” said Amanda Vanstone, who was a minister alongside Abbott in Howard’s government. “The notion of needing to vote for someone in your likeness is narcissistic.” What’s needed, she said, is someone who “is committed enough to see their beliefs through.”
At Oxford, Abbott was known as deeply religious and, on returning to Australia, joined a seminary in Sydney but left three years later. He still attends mass regularly, unusual in a nation where only 13 per cent of people who identify themselves as Catholics do and where nearly half of Australians in a 2009 survey said religion was not important in their lives.
While Abbott maintains marriage should be between a man and a woman, in April he said he might let coalition lawmakers vote on gay marriage according to their personal views. Last year he revealed that one of his three sisters was gay.
Abbott has said that abortion has been “reduced to a question of the mother’s convenience.” Abbott himself, at 19, learned his girlfriend was pregnant but said, in his 2009 book, “Battlelines,” “An abortion was out of the question.” The child was put up for adoption.
In 1987, approaching 30 with a young family to support, Abbott was hired as an editorial writer at The Australian newspaper, controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
“He took to journalism quite naturally, quite a good writer,” said former editor-in-chief David Armstrong, who hired Abbott. He was “always happiest doing analytical and opinionated stuff.”
Abbott’s writing opened doors to politicians, including Howard, in 1990 a shadow minister, who told his leader, John Hewson, that he knew of a potential press secretary.
“I wanted a range of opinions on my staff,” said Hewson, who led the Liberal Party from 1990 until 1994. “I had Abbott there as a fairly extreme conservative Catholic.”
After Hewson squandered a strong lead in the opinion polls to lose the 1993 election to Labor’s Paul Keating, Abbott joined Australians for Constitutional Monarchy.
In a 1994 special election, with Howard’s support, Abbott was elected the member for Warringah, a safe Liberal district representing Sydney’s northern beaches. He was promoted to cabinet in 2001 as minister for employment and workplace relations.
Abbott’s rise mirrors the ascension of the New South Wales branch of the Liberal party, which since 1990 has accounted for five of the past six leaders, including Howard and Hewson, and typically produces leaders with more socially conservative leanings. Former coalition Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser said in a 2011 interview that Abbott was dangerous because he’d taken the party to “the extreme right.”
Abbott quickly gained attention: Then-Labor leader Kim Beazley called him a “bomb thrower” in 2000, and shadow employment minister Cheryl Kernot said the way Abbott asked questions in parliament like a “bovver boy,” or skinhead, meant that “we’ve reached a new low.”
Abbott also earned a reputation as a workhorse. Mukesh Haikerwal, the former president of the Australian Medical Association, dealt with Abbott during his term as health minister in the mid-2000s.
“He’d always have a little notepad in his shirt pocket with his pen and would take down notes about what you were saying,” Haikerwal said. “He was very intent on getting results.”
Abbott still spends time each year working in remote Outback communities with indigenous people. He participates in the annual Pollie Pedal, a cycling event that raises money for charity, and reports for duty as a member of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service.
“He’s got a social conscience,” said Amanda Lynch, who has worked with Abbott as chairman of the Council of Small Business of Australia. “His volunteer work is not just for show.”
Still, his ascension to opposition leader surprised some pundits who didn’t think he was disciplined enough, said Stephen Stockwell, a professor of journalism and communications at Griffith University in Brisbane. After Rudd defeated Howard in 2007, the coalition churned through two leaders before Abbott won an internal ballot in 2009 by a single vote.
Abbott said that his time in opposition would shape his leadership if he won the election.
“I do think that the people who are most likely to be successful in government are those who have been successful in opposition,” he said. “The essential ingredients for success are knowing what you want to do, having clear principles and being able to run a good team.”
