Tony Abbott has been in public life for a long time. Most recently there has been his meteoric rise to leadership of the Liberal party and to a hair's breadth from the prime ministership itself. Charming and disarming as he can be, there is something deeply disturbing in the way he carries out his public role.

It has not always been pretty, but it has always been entertaining - usually comic and at times tragic. During the whole episode of the supposed 'love child' with his university girl friend, he managed to maintain a quiet dignity, particularly in the face of the final revelation that the child he thought he had fathered was not actually his. 

But there is something I find deeply disturbing in the way he carries out his public role. Charming and disarming as he can be, I find myself wondering wherein lies his moral core. Not long after his election as leader of the Liberal Party, Abbott was trying to explain away statements from his past claiming that he sometimes makes 'unreliable statements' in the 'heat of discussion.'

At that time I thought that the way to get a handle on Tony Abbott was to realise that he was like a high school or university debater. He would say anything to win an argument, confident that there would be no consequences to his actions.

Tony Abbott's missing moral core