Abbott war drums are to muffle domestic criticism

This opinion piece hits the nail right on the head. Abbott is jumping around like Popeye about to clobber people and look strong domestically. Then everyone will just magically forget how he spent his first year in office trying to seriously fuck them over. So what's happened to SSJoe then? Has he been silenced since his assertion that the poor don't drive cars? Sort of like shuffling the deck chairs?

So why are we going to another war? Surely not because the last one went so well? And why is Tony Abbott banging the drum so much louder than his American commander? 

You might imagine it has nothing to do with some infantile crusade against mediaeval barbarism. You might think a certain PM sees an opportunity to pull out of the death spiral his government's been in since it handed down the most unpopular budget in living memory. You might think that one blunder after another has forced him to an impasse where nothing is left to him but blood and circuses. You might think that. But I couldn't possibly comment. 

Senator Sue Lines was happy to comment, though. Almost alone among her Labor colleagues she had the courage to call Abbott's pompous bluster for what it is, a desperate diversion. She didn't excuse or minimise the atrocities of IS. She didn't even argue against a military response. She merely pointed to the way the increasingly unpopular PM was using the prospects of military action as a shield against domestic criticism. 

She was, of course, traduced and belittled for it, by friend and foe alike. 

But she was right, and she was right to speak up. What she did took more courage than anything Abbott has yet done. She is the sort of politician who really protects her country. more