Through sources in the PM's personal staff, Barry Everingham has been leaked the text of the conciliatory letter written to the Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono by Tony Abbott.

Your Excellency,

I have thought long and hard about the contents of this letter and, having read through several suggested replies put together by Julie Bishop's office, I have decided I need to write to you personally and from the bottom of my heart.

Like Your Excellency, I am deeply religious and totally committed to my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ — sorry I didn't mean that you are committed to Jesus; your prayers go to God through Allah (may His name be praised). On that score, mine go through a fine upstanding man among men and boys, Cardinal George Pell, who many of us see as God's consul general here on earth.

Your Excellency will, I am sure, already be aware ‒ probably from the conversations your security agents have on record from the bugging of my office (what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, yeah? ‒ that I am not my own man as far as foreign policy is concerned.

I am controlled (I am being brutally frank here, Your Excellency) by my chief of staff, whose name is Peta Credlin. She is an amazing woman who understands power. Now, her knowledge of diplomacy is marginally better than Julie Bishop's (more of her later) but she seems to be in awe of the two policy advisers she appointed and, between the three of them, I find myself in the mess I am trying to extricate myself and is why I am writing to you personally.

Peta's two experts are Andrew Shearer, who came to my office from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, where his report read: ‘inflexible and far right’. He was picked up by the Lowy Institute and was "let go".

Your Excellency need wonder no longer why I am in the foreign policy mess mentioned above. As though that isn't enough, I am lumbered with Julie Bishop, who ‒ along with that idiot Scott Morrison ‒ has created the widening rift between our two great countries.

Of course, Minister Bishop wasn't satisfied with that; no, Your Excellency — she took two steps further and also stuffed up our relations with China and the USA.

If I could drag her away from her dressmaker and hairdresser I would have a few well-chosen words with her.

You would already know she was deputy to Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull before she came to me. Both my predecessors were more than happy with the way she ironed their shirts and I have no complaints in that department either.

Your Excellency, I must now turn to the issue of telephone tapping.

When our Communist infested Australian Broadcasting Commission published those outrageous accusations of bugging, I called in our chief spy and demanded an explanation.

He smirked as he told me his policy was never to discuss security matters with anyone — and I had to remind him I was Prime Minister. His face clouded and the smirk vanished as he asked "but for how long".

So you can see what I'm dealing with here.

But he did remind me what happened recently has been going on for years; under John Howard's watch, George Bush's and Margaret Thatcher's spooks did our bugging for us.

When Whitlam, Hawke and Keating were running the show, the Russians did the bugging and under Fraser your country was safe.

He said men educated at Melbourne Grammar “didn't do those things".

Your Excellency, you have my assurance your phones and all your communications equipment is debugged and will never be interfered with again — certainly under my watch.

Right now, I must see my security chief and get to the bottom of my latest stuff up — the bugging of the East Timorese Government 's cabinet room.

Yours faithfully,

Tony Abbott

http://www.independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/letter-to-indonesia,5961

THE PRIME MINISTERSHIP OF TONY ABBOTT has turned out more of a disaster than his most dubious doubters could have envisaged.

This demands desperate measures from those who promoted him and who will lose on their investment if the government continues to flounder.

In less than three months, Tony Abbott has alienated, angered or altercated with vastly more groups than he has satisfied.

He offended women by appointing 18 men to a cabinet of 19 and 11 out of 12 parliamentary secretaries. He alienated Aborigines with his cynical broken commitment to spend his first week with the Yolngu. He outraged rural residents with backflips on funding. He shocked the education community, including the prestigious Gonski panel, with bizarre policy-on-the-run. And now he has dismayed Liberal and National supporters with his cosy deal with the Greens on debt.

Abbott’s L-plate treasurer Joe Hockey stunned observers with his demand that the debt ceiling be almost doubled to $500 billion — with no explanation as to how this tallied with pre-election anti-debt rhetoric. He has now dumped the ceiling altogether and blown out the budget with $17 billion in unnecessary spending.

Abbott has not stopped the boats, or turned back the boats, or bought the boats. They are still arriving. He is desperately hoping the arrival rate will not exceed the reduced level Labor achieved with its PNG solution.

Overseas, Abbott has set back relations with China, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea to the dark days when the hapless Alexander Downer offended virtually all Australia’s neighbours, resulting in diplomatic stand-offs and the deaths of many Australians and others.

Now East Timor is justifiably furious at ASIO’s raid of their lawyer’s Canberra office on Tuesday.

In short, this is the most conspicuous failure in the early days of any administration in the Western world in living memory — with the possible exception of Amintore Fanfani’s 1987 government in Italy, which lasted 15 weeks.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. So the forces that manipulated Abbott’s political ascension are now ratcheting up the manipulation to conceal the unfolding fiasco.

Several strategies are being deployed by both the government and the Murdoch media, which clearly sees itself as Abbott’s minder.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/abbott-and-murdoch-all-out-damage-control,5965

Of course the idiot Abbott only got where he is with the expressed support of a one-sided Murdoch... Between the two of them, they have done far more damage to this country than anyone could imagine in their wildest nightmares... Even with the silly tiffs within Labor, the country was still PROPERLY governed with decency and economic efficiency on most fronts... Now it's a massive indecent shamble followed by a furniture bonfire with the least of care about Australian people — while a rabid merde-och press is trying to sing songs of fake praise, while getting deeper into a deep sewer pit of lies, porkies, whoppers and tall tales.

WE NEED TO GET RID OF THESE LOUSY SILLY AMATEURS, ASAP, by whatever means we can. Hopefully before the year is out, only 23 days to go, someone called Malcolm will do his bit to save this country from more embarrassing embarrassments...

from the ever so "pathitically" illogical Peter Reith ("Pathitic": Pathetic and accidentally ridiculously comical at the same time)

Labor's standard response to every policy debate is to oppose the government regardless of the merits. Labor has form on these tactics; it was totally negative towards the Howard government from 1996 to 2007. Labor kids itself that Abbott was always negative on Labor policy so they are justified to respond to Abbott with his own medicine.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-10/reith-labor-pains/5145180

No, Peter of the famous Rorts... Actually Tony's medicine was pure poison mixed with viper venom, while he was in opposition... What is happening now is that Tony is using the same medicine on himself... And he is killing the goose. He is the goose. 

But one has to say that being negative towards Howard was a necessity to push for fairness in this fair country... Howard was a lying rat on many subjects — including going to war under false pretences and he would do it all over again... Now being negative against someone like Pyne deserves a medal. Pyne is an idiot and a demolisher of good stuff for no other reason he does not like the name Gonski... Meanwhile Tony Abbott has been swimming in his own sewer... Labor sees no qualm about this... Anyway it's no use telling Peter that his glasses are broken... He's got political glaucoma...

...

But the most damning part of Abbott’s speech lies in the flagrant chutzpah of these words.

“There is no country on Earth where people are made more welcome. There is no country on Earth whose people have more innate generosity to others. Yet for two centuries – with fragrant [sic] exceptions, of course – Australians had collectively failed to show to Aboriginal people the personal generosity and warmth of welcome that we have habitually extended to the stranger in our midst.”

These words are chilling, for their shameless, delu[d]ed deception.

The Prime Minister’s speech requires a fierce riposte, on two grounds.

Firstly, Australia cannot currently claim to be a generous welcoming country.

We are not showing warmth to the stranger, as Prime Minister Abbott claims. In fact, in our name, Abbott’s Government is treating men women and children fleeing persecution with appalling cruelty. Australia does not welcome refugees or offer them safety. We push them back into the sea. We send them back to the horrors from which they have fled. We incarcerate, injure, threaten and destroy them.

Secondly, Abbott speaks of our failure to offer warmth and welcome to Indigenous people.

By this Abbott claims that it is white Australia welcoming a stranger to these shores. That’s right — a stranger?

Indigenous people have lived in this land for at least 60,000 years — to suggest they are strangers in this country is beyond idiotic and embarrassing and strays into being downright offensive.

It is white settlers who became the strangers in another people’s land. It is the white people who stole the land and committed the murders and took the children from their mothers. It is us, white people, who are the violent invaders — who did not deserve to be welcomed.

Clearly Tony Abbott has not heard, or understood, the words of Paul Keating, or Kevin Rudd, or the cries of Indigenous people.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/slick-tonys-indigenous-insincerity,6194