SYDNEY — One nation’s “Mad Monk” is another’s trade champion.
Boris Johnson is rumored to have appointed former Aussie Prime Minister Tony Abbott to help drum up trade deals for Britain as an adviser to the U.K.’s relaunched Board of Trade.
The choice of the 62-year-old Abbott, who earned the nicknames “Mad Monk” at university and “Tear-down Tony” in politics, has been met with raised eyebrows.
On the one hand, roping in a former Australian prime minister to advise the U.K. on how to secure a trade deal with countries including the one he once led (albeit briefly) seems a no-brainer. On the other hand, the former prime minister in question is more famous for being on the receiving end of anti-misogyny speeches than negotiating complicated trade pacts.
In his two years as prime minister, he managed to seal long-running trade pacts with China, South Korea and Japan.
So who is Tony Abbott, and is his appointment to the trade board (which No. 10 Downing Street has yet to formally confirm) likely to pay off for a post-Brexit Britain? Here are five things you should know.
(Disclaimer: The author was a member of the Anyone But Abbott campaign group seeking to find a candidate to replace Abbott as the member of parliament for Warringah in the 2013 Australian election.)
1. Colorful background — and British ties
Born in 1957 in London to an Australian mother and a British father, Abbott’s family moved to Sydney when he was 2. Abbott graduated with degrees in economics and law from the University of Sydney, before returning to the U.K. to study politics and philosophy at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship. He was a middling student but a top boxer and right-wing organizer.
After uni, Abbott headed back to Sydney to train as a priest, before quitting the seminary to become a journalist. In 1994, he was elected to the Australian federal parliament as the conservative Liberal Party member for Sydney’s beachside seat of Warringah and vowed to be a “junkyard dog savaging the other side.” He held the seat for a quarter of a century, before losing it to independent Zali Steggall at the 2019 election.
Along the way Abbott has been an Ironman triathlete and a surf lifesaver … a volunteer firefighter who reportedly blew off Cabinet meetings to put out blazes … a minister for health who said he “wouldn’t be rushing out” to get his daughters vaccinated against cervical cancer … he found a long-lost son, then lost him again … ate a raw onion … smoked marijuana (didn’t inhale) … became prime minister in 2013, named himself minister for women, repealed the carbon price, then said repealing the carbon price was his top achievement as minister for women … reintroduced knighthoods to Australia, then gave one to Prince Philip … lost the prime ministership in 2015 in a party-room coup … then waged a years-long revenge campaign.
2. Fair-weather Brexiteer
Given the celebrations in Britain’s Euroskeptic corners at the news of Abbott’s impending appointment, you’d think he had Brexit running through his veins.
In fact, he backed Remain ahead of the U.K.’s EU referendum.
In a Times column published in April 2016, he wrote: “Britain’s challenge now is to save Europe, not leave it.” Yet just a few months later Abbott claimed he was “quietly thrilled that the British people have resolved to claim back their country.” It was then just a hop, skip and pragmatic jump to supporting a no-deal Brexit — which Abbott advocated for in Tory bible the Spectator in a March 2019 column titled “No deal? No problem.”
“As a former prime minister of a country that has a perfectly satisfactory ‘no deal’ relationship with the EU, let me assure you: no deal would be no problem,” he wrote cheerily — and so the term “trading on Australia terms” was born. (It is worth noting that Australia is scrambling to negotiate its own trade agreement with the EU at this very moment.)
Trade experts and economists were apoplectic, with some slamming his views as “embarrassing” and “voodoo economics” … but a certain fellow reformed Remainer appears to have taken notice.
3. He fights bushfires but reckons climate change ‘might even be beneficial’
Abbott is a long-time volunteer for the New South Wales Rural Fire Service. But while scientists say Australia’s extreme weather, fires and drought are linked to climate change, Abbott is the poster-boy for the skeptics.
Aside from earning the dubious distinction of being the first world leader to repeal a carbon price, Abbott has repeatedly called on Australia to follow U.S. President Donald Trump out of the Paris Climate Agreement.
In a 2017 speech at the climate-skeptic Global Warming Policy Foundation think tank in London, Abbott repeated his well-worn line that “the so-called settled science of climate change” is “absolute crap,” and likened action on global warming now to “primitive people” who “once killed goats to appease the volcano gods.”
Australia was ravaged by bushfires around the turn of the year | Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images
In the same speech, he went on to say: “In most countries, far more people die in cold snaps than in heatwaves, so a gradual lift in global temperatures, especially if it’s accompanied by more prosperity and more capacity to adapt to change, might even be beneficial.” (Ed Miliband was not impressed.)
Appointing as a top trade adviser a man who just last year railed against the idea of EU member nations “all heeding the same faceless Brussels bureaucrats and worshipping at the altar of climate change,” is, then, something of a curious move for Boris Johnson, just as the U.K. prepares to play host to the COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow next year.
Then again, perhaps it’s shrewd, given the U.K.’s desire for a trade deal with the U.S.
4. Crazy, or crazy like a fox?
Abbott has long been a divisive figure in Australia, and has seemingly relished living up to his nicknames. But in his memoir “A Bigger Picture,” former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull wrote that the “problem with Abbott wasn’t simply electoral unpopularity — he was crazy.”
Turnbull, who engaged in a toxic political tug-of-war with Abbott for the leadership of the Australian Liberal Party, continued: “Was that surprising? He had, after all, been nicknamed the ‘Mad Monk’ at university.”
As evidence, Turnbull cited two examples of what he described as national security overreach: Abbott’s purported plan to send armed defense force personnel to Ukraine to guard the crash site of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, and another to deploy 3,500 ground troops to Iraq to fight Islamic State.
Abbott and Scott Morrison, right, had a feud but have put that behind them | Tracey Nearmy/Getty Images
But is Abbott really crazy, or is he crazy like a fox?
Despite the fact some critics have taken shots at the lack of relevant trade experience in his CV, in truth Abbott does have some form when it comes to getting big agreements across the line: In his two years as prime minister, he managed to seal long-running trade pacts with China, South Korea and Japan.
A deal with Australia is a top target for the newly independently trading U.K. And while Abbott has not always been on the best of terms with current Aussie Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the two have apparently buried the hatchet.
So what sort of trade deal could Abbott be pushing? Here’s a hint, via a foreword for a report by the Free Enterprise Group: “If Britain is determined to make the most of Brexit … why not strive for a one page FTA with Australia?” Abbott mused, adding that “the movement of goods between our two countries should be absolutely free of tariffs or quotas.”
5. There’s always a backlash
Abbott’s rumored appointment to the Board of Trade — and a report that the Australian government granted him an exemption from its international travel ban, allowing him to fly to London — have sparked a backlash Down Under.
Steggall, Abbott’s successor in the seat of Warringah, told the Sydney Morning Herald that the episode “unfortunately only adds to the perception that there is a double standard.” She added: “I would also question the appropriateness of a former Australian prime minister in a senior trade role now negotiating for the benefit of another nation.”
Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tweeted: “Is the UK joking? They are meant to be hosting the #COP26 Climate Conference next year.”
Abbott is the beneficiary of a generous parliamentary pension | Ryan Pierse/Getty Images
Meanwhile, Greens leader Adam Bandt demanded Abbott be stripped of his parliamentary pension, worth approximately €184,000 a year. “Tony Abbott’s job is now to promote another country, even if it means disadvantaging Australian farmers, producers and exporters,” he said. “The Australian public should not be paying him to advance another country’s interests.”
For the “junkyard dog,” that’ll be manna from heaven.
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