Ms Bishop, who is Australia's longest-serving female federal politician, said she hoped her recognition would inspire young Australian women "to put themselves forward for public life and to be proud of their country".

"I think the fact that so many more women have come into politics … is a terrific thing," she said.

"I don't want to be complacent I want to see lots more."

Other former politicians recognised in the honours include Philip Ruddock, Graham Richardson, Ron Boswell and former state premiers Mike Baird and Dennis Napthine.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-07/tony-abbott-scores-queens-birthday-top-honour/12330492

Oh and remember how Bronwyn was the BIASED speaker of parliament?

From the SMH letters (9/6/20)

Are those at the helm of Australia’s honours lists asleep at the wheel (‘‘Ex-PM leads Queen’s Birthday Honours’’, June 8)? Tony Abbott? A ridiculed ex-prime minister whose main achievements were destroying climate change policy, holding back marriage equality, a knighthood for Prince Philip and eating an onion. Next is Bronwyn Bishop, a selfserving, disgraced political hack, and arguably the most biased speaker of the House of Representatives, who was hounded out of office for shouting herself a helicopter ride paid for by the taxpayer. When do Australians get to call time on these public gravy train travellers?

Irving Wallach, Alexandria

Seriously? Abbott, Bishop and Graham Richardson? A shamelessly divisive and bellicose prime minister, an overtly partisan speaker and a whatever-it-takes backroom head-cracker? Then again, when it comes to strange appointments, there is precedent: Caligula made his horse a consul, and George III knighted an oak tree.

Adrian Connelly, Springwood

To give Abbott Australia’s top honour completely diminishes the value of these awards to the many far more deserving recipients. What a disgrace.

John Lander, Killarney Heights

The panel that awards these honours must truly live in a Canberra bubble. They should hide within it, in shame.

Pierre Mars, Vaucluse

This must come close to the definition of irony. On the day that Abbott was awarded his gong, the Herald runs two pieces marking the end of thermal coal. The first (‘‘Renewables spike, virus threaten coal’’, June 8) notes that renewables are rendering coal-fired power uneconomic; the second (‘‘As warned, world’s biggest investor acts against coal’’, June 8) reports on the move by BlackRock investment to move away from fossil fuels. Abbott was the wrecking ball of Australian policy on carbon emissions. He obfuscated, pandered to the coal industry and left Australia a continuing legacy of climate policy inaction. For all this, he is awarded our highest honour.

Neil Ormerod, Kingsgrove

The top awards don’t go to those who have altruistically given of themselves, but instead to those who have gained notoriety in their wellremunerated jobs (‘‘Queen’s Birthday 2020 Honours: The full list of this year’s winners’’, June 8). It is only when you look at the citations for the medals that you see true service acknowledged that has not previously been rewarded. It would have been more honest for Abbott to be honoured simply for his service to the RFS, and leave it at that.

David Rush, Lawson

It is hard not to be struck by the contrast between the selfless dedication of the non-political honours recipients and the roll-call of wreckers, grifters and spivs who represent the political classes.

Tom McGinness, Randwick

All politicians should be banned from receiving state awards for simply doing their job.

Lucinda Ho, Cammeray

I wonder what Julia thinks?

Vicky Marquis, Glebe

Buckingham Palace has released a new photograph of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh to mark the duke's 99th birthday.

Prince Philip, who celebrates his birthday on Wednesday, has been shielding with the Queen at Windsor Castle during the coronavirus lockdown.

The photo was taken in the castle's grounds during sunny weather last week.

It is the first public photo of the duke since he was seen leaving hospital in London on 24 December last year.

Prince Philip spent four nights in the private King Edward VII's Hospital in relation to a "pre-existing condition".

• Prince Philip's decades of royal duty
• Royal Family tree and line of succession 

In the picture, which was taken by a Press Association photographer, the duke is wearing a Household Division tie.

The Queen is wearing a heart-shaped 18.8 carat diamond brooch called Cullinan V, which she has worn many times, including for her granddaughter Princess Eugenie's wedding and London Fashion Week.

It follows another photograph last week that showed the Queen, 94, riding a pony called Balmoral Fern in Windsor Home Park.

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52986922

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SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: Ever fond of slogans, Tony Abbott defined his ‘Prime Ministership of Indigenous Affairs’ by his mantra of ‘get kids to school’, ‘get adults to work’, and ‘make communities safe’. But six years after rising to the highest office in the land, the figures on Abbott’s performance in boosting black employment, school attendance and community safety are in. And they’re a complete train wreck. Chris Graham investigates. Additional research by Matilda Duncan.

There are five basic rules of propaganda. The second, and arguably the easiest to achieve, is sometimes called ‘The rule of orchestration’: endlessly repeat the same messages in different variations and combinations.

Or to put it in a modern political context: if you tell a lie often enough, it eventually becomes the truth.

Anyone who received a copy of the Queen’s Birthday Honours List earlier this month, and is a keen watcher of Indigenous affairs, might have heard Joseph Goebbels’ Theory of Propaganda ringing loudly in their ears.

Over the June long weekend, former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott was appointed the highest honour, a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC), for his “eminent service to the people and Parliament of Australia, particularly as Prime Minister, and through significant contributions to trade, border control, and to the Indigenous community”.

Abbott was, of course, poison to Indigenous affairs, and widely regarded so by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people around the country. In his first budget as prime minister, Abbott cut more than half a billion dollars from Indigenous affairs funding, and then redirected hundreds of millions more away from small Aboriginal community-controlled organisations to large corporations and NGOs.

In the process, he created a single funding stream – the Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS) – which he housed within his own Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, a department with no experience in wide-scale program delivery.

The affects were immediate, and catastrophic – services in Indigenous communities around the country were thrown into chaos, a fact acknowledged by a 2016 Senate Inquiry. But while his actions as the self-appointed ‘Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs’ were devastating, his words weren’t much better.

Read more:

https://newmatilda.com/2020/06/22/propaganda-101-how-tony-abbott-won-australias-highest-honour-for-service-to-indigenous-communities/

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Remember that Tony also appointed himself the Minister for Woman's Affairs...

Note: Uncle Fester has been promoted to head of the family...

"Tony set the world on fire so he could extinguish it..."

"Tony destroyed democratic protections..."

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He has previously praised the “solidarity” of the English-speaking nations that share strong bonds with the UK. Now the former Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, is tipped to be appointed to advise the UK – his birthplace – on how to seize trade opportunities post-Brexit.

The Guardian understands there’s been speculation in Australian government circles for some time that Abbott – a social conservative who was prime minister for nearly two years until he was toppled in a snap party vote in 2015 – was in line for a British trade advisory role of some form.

That talk intensified on Wednesday when the Sun reported that the “forthright Aussie” would become Britain’s “new trade deal supremo”.

While the Sun suggested that Abbott would be joint president of the UK Board of Trade, this could not immediately be confirmed, with the UK high commission in Canberra saying the reports were premature.

Bevan Shields, an Australian London-based journalist for the Nine newspapers, reported on Twitter that he had been informed the story was not accurate. Instead, Abbott was likely to join the board “in some sort of advisory capacity”.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/26/former-australian-pm-tony-abbott-tipped-for-post-brexit-uk-trade-advisory-role

A "SOCIAL CONSERVATIVE"???? who the hell writes this shit at the Guardian? Tony Abbott was NOT a social PM. He did everything he could to destroy the social fabric of Australia by lying, by fudging and employing stooges (now in charge of the CONservative government) who did some very naughty things and still do.

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A knighthood for Tony?... In the bag... the shaffbag to be dropped at sea...

The appointment of former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott as a British trade envoy is not quite treason but certainly a further sign he has London written on his heart.

That is where Abbott was born in 1957. He went from Australia to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and remains a royalist who as prime minister gave the Duke of Edinburgh an Australian knighthood.

The bestowal baffled many Australians who couldn’t see what services to them warranted a tribute to a prince already overloaded with gongs. But Abbott was keen to do what British PMs could and dispense royal rewards.

And he probably wouldn’t reject a display of royal approval himself, should his services rendered to trade negotiation be worthy of honour. Perhaps he has been chatting to Sir Lynton Crosby.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/28/tony-abbotts-propo...

With disaster Tony, the Poms (Englanders) are going to make a spate of bad decisions. Really bad decisions. They will will need all the luck in the world to survive. The UK needs Tony Abbott like a hole in the head but a hole needs a head to fit into. It's going to be frightfully amusing... Meanwhile the BBC has to fear further cuts to its budget, as Tony does not like public broadcasting and its views. Tony on BskyB will be your breakfast fare... Tony has a knack to set things on fire and bring a pair of budgie smugglers as an extinguisher to show you how "it's done"...

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What is Tony Abbott to Britain or we to him? A failed Australian politician who will be remembered, if at all, for believing climate change was “probably doing good” as his country burned, and being eviscerated for his sexist comments by Julia Gillard. Abbott is a has-been from the other side of the world of whom we know little and care less. Nevertheless, Boris Johnson is thinking of making him our trade envoy. No one has voted for Abbott in Britain and he negotiated no major trade deals in his error-strewn period as Australia’s prime minister, which ended in 2015, when, incidentally, his own party judged him to be worthless and brought him down.

His record does not matter to Johnson because Abbott is a product of the global network of rightwing thinktanks that has learned how easy and cheap it is to manipulate British politics. I want to emphasise the cheapness. Britain is the Poundshop of European politics, where money goes further. Pecunia non olet – “money does not stink” – said the emperor Vespasian as he defended his tax on the sale of urine from Rome’s sewers to tanners who used it to soften animal skins.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/29/how-fitting-for-the-tories-to-hire-a-worthless-former-australian-pm-tony-abbott

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In some country of Europe a "Vespasian utility" is a public toilet... We can only feel sorry for the Brits... but, hang on, they're the ones who sent us a Rhodes' educated Tony Abbott to destroy Aussie politics... Have him back... He is a shocker...

by Chris Sweeney

Rarely do firebrand politicians leave their own nation and pop up in a significant role in another. Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is bucking that trend, as he’s set to be appointed a senior figure in the UK’s board of trade.

Abbott is actually British by birth, born in London before heading to Sydney as a child, via the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme. He was back later in life as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University before returning to Australia to become a priest.

That was interrupted by his desire to run for Parliament, but to do so, he had to renounce his British citizenship – and did so in 1993. Until last year, he was the MP for Warringah, so he is undeniably an experienced pair of hands.

The pinnacle of his career was as leader of Australia’s centre-right Liberal Party, when he had a two-year spell as PM. But to make a comparison with the country’s famous export Marmite, Abbott is either loved or hated.

To followers, he’s passionate and strong-willed. To others he’s a narrow-minded hate monger; one Australian was jailed for head-butting him after spotting Abbott walking on the street.

Abbott is often derided as being a misogynist and a homophobe, and the claims are hard to deny. Previous comments regarding women attributed to Abbott include, “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” and a pitch to vote for him, “because I’m the guy with the not bad looking daughters.”

He also admitted that homosexuality made him “probably feel a bit threatened… as most people do” and voiced the backwards claim “there is no doubt that [homosexuality] challenges, if you like, orthodox notions of the right order of things.”

Another of his gaffes included him offending the Irish diaspora by comparing supporters of his political rivals as “a bit like the Irishman who lost 10 pounds betting on the Grand National and then lost 20 pounds on the action replay.”

He even managed to shock parents by revealing that he told his daughters that their virginity was “the greatest gift you can give someone.”

Other cornerstones of his career have been mitigating the effects of climate change, opposing same sex marriage and trying to prevent abortion. All that aside, he clearly has charisma; he introduced a $430 million project to assist mental health sufferers find jobs and managed to sign high-profile trade agreements with China, Japan and South Korea.

Abbott says of himself: “Inevitably if you have convictions, you’ll draw criticism but if you want to get things done, you need people with convictions.”

That's precisely the dilemma Britain’s political voices are debating. The meek Health Secretary Matt Hancock was skewered live on Sky News; when asked about Abbott’s personal beliefs, he mumbled along, avoiding the issue before stating: “He is also an expert on trade.”

Trade Minister Greg Hands echoed that, saying, “I welcome the fact that a former prime minister of Australia is willing to help this country out.” But Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer countered: “I have real concerns about Tony Abbott, I don't think he’s the right person for the job. If I was prime minister, I wouldn’t appoint him.”

And Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon barrelled in calling him “a misogynist, he’s a sexist, he’s a climate change denier. Trade, in many respects, should reflect our values – there should be ethics attached to any country’s trading profile.”

Even members of Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party are against it. MP Caroline Nokes blasted: “He’s a misogynist, he has very poor views on LGBTQ rights and I just don’t think this is a man who should be anywhere near our Board of Trade.”

This is the jam. Could Britain be losing a sharp operator because of his personal views?

After all, Abbott is the man who ate an onion (skin and all) on TV which led to such a boom in sales that Onions Australia admitted its phones were ringing off the hook.

Also, he is not standing for election; he will be employed as a hired hand. Many senior staff across the civil service, large corporations and government departments hold questionable views.

There is no dubiety about Abbott’s thoughts. He’s made them clear. So why is the government dancing around the issue? Ministers should be upfront and respond that they are aware Abbott has expressed homophobic and misogynistic views. But that they are willing to put them aside and hire him for his experience and ability.

The idea of airbrushing them away makes Downing Street look like some kind of Tinpot Republic. Copies of speeches and clips of him saying offensive things are readily available.

Hate speech or discrimination should not be tolerated in any environment. But the genie is out of the bottle here. If it wants to employ Abbott, the British government needs to grow up, stand behind who he is and embrace him, warts and all.

Don’t insult everyone else by trying to pretend you don’t know what or who he is. He may well help deliver outstandingly favourable trade deals for Britain around the globe, and if he does, he’ll do that as a homophobe and a misogynist. Why can’t they just admit it?

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/499807-uk-tony-abbott-misogyny/

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Tony Abbott should be employed by Britain to sell their solar panels and windmills... We would place a caveat on Marmite imports to Australia... Tony Abbott is also a staunch Catholic who could be awkwards in Anglican England if he was not a Prince Philip ("when a man opens a car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife")  knighthood contortionist... As English summers are increasingly warmer, Tony could patrol surf beaches in Wales, in his warm red underpants, and participate in fire-fighting brushfires in Scotland. A very versatile gentleman, I am sure that the majority of Aussies would be happy for Tony to be exported to the mother country... Com'on, he's yours.

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Britain has ignored a storm of criticism to confirm ex-Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott as a trade adviser, with Boris Johnson’s backing.

Mr Abbott has been appointed despite vocal complaints that his conservative views about women and gay people made him unfit to represent the UK.

Some British MPs have said Mr Abbott was not suitable for the job while TV presenter Kay Burley labelled him a “misogynist” and “homophobe” to which Health Secretary Matt Hancock stated: “Well, he’s also an expert in trade”.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson defended Mr Abbott and trumpeted his credentials before the appointment was announced on Friday (local time).

“This is a guy who was elected by the people of the great liberal democratic nation of Australia,” he said.

“And Australia… it’s an amazing country it’s a freedom-loving country, it’s a liberal country. There you go – I think that speaks for itself.”

But many have questioned his suitability to the role and even those on his own side of politics condemned the decision when it emerged he was in line for the unpaid position.

Conservative MP Caroline Nokes said appointing Mr Abbott would be “awful”.

“He is a misogynist, he has very poor views on LGBTQ rights, I just don’t think this is a man who should be anywhere near our Board of Trade,” she told the BBC.

“This is such a bad idea, I’m not sure I can come up with words for how awful I think it is.”

Earlier Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Mr Abbott’s comments suggesting some elderly COVID victims should be left to die naturally were “disgraceful”.

“The idea that anyone would take that view is offensive and wrong,” she told Sky News.

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2020/09/05/tony-abbott-board-of-tr...

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Great news. We all knew Tony Abbott was a Pom at heart. May his career blossom........... like a cactus... Overnight, sweet and short...

Tony Abbott is an expert on trade, like I am an expert in fixing dunny seats...