Hard Up Abbott Ruins Weekend

Tony Abbott continues to bewilder if not outright disgust. In Launceston yesterday Abbott described sex as “one of life’s great joys” and bemoaned the lack he's getting out on the campaign trail. People were instantly thrown into a horrible image of Abbott either hard at play on the workbench, or lustily stalking lonely hotel corridors, clenching and unclenching his fist.

Abbott went on to say that “…inevitably there's a sense in which the electorate is your family as much as your own family.” That might explain why he is able to floor us with swift segues between the usual pap he speaks and a running “Dear Tony” styled sexual advice clinic in which he has described, over the years, the dangers of 'Vattican Roulette', his emotional discovery of a long lost son in the Canberra media (who wasn’t, actually), and the woman’s “gift” of virginity. Abbott wants to put the country on his paternal knee, and give us all the birds and the bees. No thanks, mate. Maybe he keeps introducing sex into his narrative because of a new found interest in Freud - look out for the upcoming policy document The Psychopathology of (Australian) Dreams - what the suburban house and picket fence says about your suppressed sexual traumas. His eldest daughter Frances didn’t appreciate the advice to guard the gift jealously. Her father revealed to the Herald Sun she had described him as a “…lame, gay, churchy loser.”

As far as we can tell, we're still very much in what people call a 'phoney election campaign', where the leaders stalk each other through the media...but are perfectly free to return at night to their wives. Which leads to concerns about the kind of commentary Abbott will feel the need to run when the election is in full swing - imagine three weeks without the greatest of joys? He'll hit Election Day like a possessed bee, sexual pollen all over his hairy legs, winging back to the hive and dropping comments about his longings. Or else he won’t be able to hold on. He might rip open a ballot box and roll around in its contents, urging the public to punish him.

If anything, Abbott has ruined the weekend for many Australians. His comments on sex are as effective a passion killers as say, shitting yourself, or hearing a missing child report over the radio as you're about to get down to it.

But there is just one more immediate concern. This week, reports surfaced of a clandestine Valentine’s Day meeting between surly media mogul, world dominator Rupert Murdoch and Abbott. The Liberal leader said of the meeting, "what could be more natural?" Indeed. Go with what comes naturally. The editorials in Murdoch’s papers have been reading suspiciously like Valentines Day messages – love anon. And with his News Corporation journos all lining up to give Abbott an editorial reach around; what else are we supposed to think?