Howard explained:\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m uneasy about the idea of having royal commissions or inquiries into essentially a political decision\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think you should ever begin to go down the American path of using the law for\u00a0narrow targeted political purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n
I believe there is no doubt Abbott is using the law to achieve a political goal and his agenda is clearly to smear the Labor Party, both its former leaders and its current one.<\/p>\n
However, as we have seen, Tony Abbott has a habit of failing in the public\u2019s eyes on anything that does not involve the military. The only things that have propped up his plummeting opinion polling have been his response to the Malaysian Airlines disasters, and the ‘war on terror’.<\/p>\n
Home grown issues like the budget, broken promises (of which there have\u00a0been too many to count), soaring unemployment, and a skyrocketing cost of living, have seen the public perception of Abbott sink rapidly and it\u2019s fair to say he started out as one of the most unpopular Prime Ministers ever elected, if not the most.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s face it, the only reason Abbott won the election is because he was not Julia Gillard or Kevin Rudd.<\/p>\n
So if Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd had become so unpopular, then why the need to try to publicly humiliate them in Royal Commissions?<\/p>\n
We have all seen those CCTV clips on the news and current affair programmes of someone lying unconscious on the road after being bashed by a gang of drunken louts. In those videos there is usually one gutless lowlife that will come and put the boot in, kicking\u00a0the unconscious victim in the head while they are down.<\/p>\n
This is what Tony Abbott and George Brandis are doing, putting in a kick to the head while Kevin and Julia are down. Rarely has there been such a display of cowardice and sheer gutlessness from an Australian government.<\/p>\n
![\"Tony](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/gillardrudd1.jpg?resize=600%2C379\")
Tony wants to get that last kick in\u00a0(source: Wikimedia Commons)<\/p><\/div>\n
As John Howard’s comments would indicate, the Abbott\u00a0is failing. Let\u2019s face it, if you can\u2019t win over your former Liberal leader than your plan is backfiring on you, as Royal Commissions often do.<\/p>\n
So what did we learn from the Pink Batts Royal Commission?<\/p>\n
We learnt the government that claims we have a ‘budget emergency’ was happy to throw millions of dollars at a Royal Commission in the desperate hope to further damage Kevin Rudd.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s about it. No new information of any note came out. I guess the previous eight inquiries into the matter must have done their job, leaving the Royal Commission to end up a hellishly expensive failure.<\/p>\n
Which brings us to the Trade Union Royal Commission which has actually had some success.<\/p>\n
The success of the Trade Union Royal Commission, however, has not given Abbott and Brandis ammunition to go after Labor, far from it. Instead they have shot themselves in the foot.<\/p>\n
The only success of any note to come from TURC, as it is known, has been the total and utter destruction of the credibility of the Liberals’ new best friend Kathy Jackson, the self-proclaimed whistleblower who, as a result of TURC, is better known for her charity shags and her quarter of a million dollar personal spending accounts.<\/p>\n