In an attempt to turn the screws on the government as we approach the home straight of the 2013 federal election, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has obviously decided that playing the victim will strengthen his lead in the polls as well as allay the fears many still have that he's a political thug in sheep's clothing. In an astounding show of gall Abbott recently claimed that former Prime Minister Julia Gillard had reduced Australian politics to a contest of ''crude political head-banging''.
No doubt the tongue lashing he received from Gillard in her now famous Misogyny speech still smarts with him, but to use that as a catalyst for playing the victim is appalling in it's cynicism and opportunism. During the time Abbott and Gillard duked it out on the political stage it was Abbott who masterminded numerous vicious attacks on Gillard's character, aided and abetted by his mates in the Murdoch media, culminating in his engineering of his party's prosecution of the AWU scandal. His aim in that one issue alone was to portray Gillard as a crook unfit for office, even though he and others in the LNP knew she had done nothing wrong.
But perhaps the clearest proof of Abbott's gross hypocricy is the image of him standing in front of degrading, low-brow placards attacking the former Prime Minister along gender lines. A picture paints a thousand words? And many more it should be said. Mr Abbott seems to think that with the electoral winds blowing in his favour the Australian public are ripe for hustling. Whatever the truth of that, in time to come - possibly next year - Gillard will publish her memoirs, and then some healthy home truths will be on the record for Abbott and the public to chew on. What goes around comes around.