Tony Abbott

Tony Abbott (born November 4, 1957, London, England) is an Australian politician who served as a member of the Australian House of Representatives (1994–2019), leader of the Liberal Party of Australia (2009–15), and prime minister of Australia (2013–15).

Abbott attended the University of Sydney, where he earned a B.A. in economics (1979) and a law degree (1981). While there he served as president of the student government and frequently wrote about conservative political causes for local and national publications. He next studied at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, earning an M.A. in politics and philosophy. Returning to Australia, he entered St. Patrick’s Seminary (1984–87), but the allure of politics and his own journalistic curiosity drew him away from the priesthood. Abbott, by then a regular contributor to the Australian newsweekly The Bulletin, became a full-time journalist after taking a short break to work as a manager at a concrete-mixing plant. He wrote for The Australian, one of the country’s top-circulating news dailies, before taking a job as press secretary for Liberal Party leader John Hewson in 1990. When the Liberals were defeated in 1993 in an election that they were widely expected to win, Hewson became a pariah within the party, and Abbott found himself out of work. From 1993 to 1994 he served as executive director for Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy, an organization dedicated to preserving Australia’s historical and political ties to the British crown.

Having viewed Australia’s political system from both inside and out, Abbott successfully campaigned for a parliamentary seat of his own in 1994, representing the constituency of Warringah, New South Wales. When Liberal Party leader John Howard was elected prime minister in 1996, Abbott was appointed parliamentary secretary to the minister for employment, education, training, and youth affairs in the new government. He changed portfolios in 1998, becoming minister for employment services. In 2001 he was elevated to the cabinet, retaining much of his previous portfolio while also serving as leader of the House of Representatives.

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Abbott was named minister for health and aging in 2003, and it was in that role that he faced his most controversial challenge as a member of the government. In 2006 he exercised his veto power as health minister to prevent the drug RU-486, which induces abortion during the early weeks of pregnancy, from being made available in Australia. In response a broad coalition of members of the House of Representatives forced a free vote that stripped Abbott of his regulatory power over the drug, and it was made available to Australian hospitals the following year.

With the fall of the Howard government in 2007, Abbott moved into opposition as the shadow minister overseeing families, community services, and indigenous affairs. The departure of Howard, who had led the Liberal Party for 16 of the previous 22 years, left a vacuum that was filled by Brendan Nelson. After less than a year, Nelson was turned out in a leadership contest in favour of Malcolm Turnbull, whose support for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme split the party. On December 1, 2009, Abbott, who publicly questioned the existence of global warming and opposed Rudd’s plans, defeated Turnbull in a leadership contest that was decided by a single vote. Immediately after winning the Liberal leadership, Abbott put to a secret intraparty vote whether the Liberals should back Rudd’s carbon trading bill; Abbott’s position was endorsed by a vote of 54 to 29. The following day the plan was voted down in the Australian Senate for the second time in a year.

In June 2010 Julia Gillard replaced Rudd as Labor Party leader and shortly thereafter called for an election to be held August 21 (see Australian federal election of 2010). The election failed to produce an outright majority for either Labor or the Liberals and their allies, the Nationals, and both Abbott and Gillard began talks with independent and Green representatives in the hope of forming a government. Although one independent member of the House of Representatives ultimately supported the Liberals, the other independents and the Greens backed Labor, which was able to form a government in early September 2010.

Although the Labor administration—under first Gillard and then briefly, from June to September 2013, under Rudd—oversaw a period of relative economic stability, party infighting and various controversial government policies, especially regarding immigration, caused steady slippage in Labor’s popularity among the electorate. In the campaign leading to the general election in September 2013, Abbott promised reform. The Liberal-National coalition won the vote by a wide margin, and Abbott became prime minister.

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Abbott began his administration by taking a number of decisive actions. He instituted policies to turn away boats carrying asylum seekers to Australia and repealed taxes on greenhouse-gas emitters and on profits from iron-ore and coal mining. Both moves were popular, but, as his administration went on, his other economic policies and social conservatism began to draw criticism from the public. His opinion-poll ratings suffered, leaving him vulnerable to a leadership challenge by Turnbull on September 14, 2015. The vote ousted Abbott as party head and prime minister, and the following day Turnbull was sworn in as prime minister. Abbott continued to serve in the House of Representatives until he was ousted from his seat in the May 2019 federal election.