Here are four Abbott quotes from yesteryear.
"I'm all in favour of paid maternity leave as a voluntary thing. I'm dead against paid maternity leave as a compulsory thing. I think that making businesses pay what seems to them two wages to get one worker are, almost nothing could be more calculated to make businesses feel that the odds are stacked against them. So, voluntary paid maternity leave, yes; compulsory paid maternity leave, over this government's dead body, frankly, it just won't happen under this government." July 2002.
"The Howard government's industrial legislation, it was good for wages, it was good for jobs, and it was good for workers. And let's never forget that." March 2008
"Climate change is absolute crap." October 2009.
"My instinct is to extend to as many people as possible the freedom and benefits of life in Australia. A larger population will bring that about, provided that it's also a more productive one." January 2010.
In this election campaign, he would have you believe that parental leave is a great leap forward to be funded by a multibillion-dollar tax on business, that WorkChoices is "dead, buried and cremated", and that immigration must be slashed to keep Australia small and comfy.
This is policy by focus group, banged together on the run, from a man who'll say anything to get elected. The true danger from Abbott, though, lies in his economic illiteracy. And that of his team, rooted as they are in the antiquated nostrum that government debt is always a mortal sin. If the global financial crisis had happened on their watch we would still be slumped in recession.
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