Tony Abbott is the Liberal Party member for Warringah (NSW) in the Australian Commonwealth Parliament.

His website provides the following biography:

Tony Abbott was elected Member for Warringah at a by-election in March 1994. Prior to entering Parliament he was Executive Director of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy from 1993-94. From 1990-93 he was press secretary and political advisor to the Leader of the Opposition, Dr John Hewson. His previous career was in journalism, where he wrote as a feature writer for ‘The Bulletin’ and ‘The Australian’.

Tony was appointed Minister for Health and Ageing on the 7 October 2003.

After the Federal election in 2007 Tony became Shadow Minister for Families, Community Services, Indigenous Affairs & the Voluntary Sector.

He lives in Forestville with wife Margaret and three daughters.

Education

• St. Ignatius Riverview
• Sydney University
• Economics/Law
• First Grade Rugby
• President of the SRC
• Rhodes Scholar, Oxford University
• MA, Politics and Philosophy
• Won two Blues in boxing
• St. Patrick’s Seminary, Manly

Political Career

On the election of the Howard Government in 1996 he was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs. In this role, he was responsible for the establishment of the successful Greencorps program for young people.

Following the 1998 election he was appointed to the new portfolio of Minister for Employment Services. As Minister, he oversaw the development of the Job Network and a major expansion of Work for the Dole.

In January 2001, Tony was promoted to Cabinet as Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business. Following the 2001 election he was appointed Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Leader of the House and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service

Tony was appointed Minister for Health and Ageing on the 7 October 2003.

He has written two books in defence of the existing constitutional system, “The Minimal Monarchy” and “How to Win the Constitutional War”.

Mr Abbott is a social conservative who has trouble managing his behaviour, as evidenced by his interaction with Nicola Roxon during the 2007 election campaign, and his outrageous and reprehensible conduct towards Bernie Banton:

OTHER than win his seat, Tony Abbott’s tasks for this election campaign were simple – don’t offend anybody, and turn up for the nationally televised live debate with Labor’s Nicola Roxon.

Thanks to a sharp tongue, ambitious scheduling and the inexplicable failure to take into account that election events rarely run on time, the Health Minister fluffed both.

First, he had to apologise to the dying asbestos victim Bernie Banton. Hours later he was apologising for arriving at the debate 30 minutes late.

Ms Roxon, who had the stage to herself for the first half of the National Press Club event, was unimpressed. At the conclusion, as they shook hands for the cameras, Ms Roxon said: “You can’t even get here on time.”

Mr Abbott replied: “It certainly wasn’t intentional.”

Ms Roxon: “You can control these things, mate. I’m sure had you wanted to, you could.”

Mr Abbott: “That’s bullshit. You’re being deliberately unpleasant. I suppose you can’t help yourself, can you?”

Ms Roxon: “I can’t help myself and you’ve well and truly earned it today.”

The Health Minister’s day began with him ringing Mr Banton to apologise for his comments the day before. Accompanied by unionists and other advocates, Mr Banton had arrived at Mr Abbott’s Manly electorate office on Tuesday with a petition calling for the mesothelioma drug Alimta to be listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

But Mr Abbott was in Melbourne and Mr Banton was in high dudgeon. The minister dismissed the petition delivery as “a stunt”.

“Let’s be up front about this, I know Bernie is very sick, but just because a person is sick doesn’t necessarily mean that he is pure of heart in all things.”

Predictably, that went over like a plumbic dirigible, prompting yesterday morning’s smoothing of the waters.

Mr Abbott’s tardiness was the fault of the Coalition, with a last-minute decision to try to set the debate agenda with a $440 million health policy announcement at a Melbourne clinic.

John Howard, Peter Costello and Mr Abbott were scheduled to arrive at 10am. The formalities were to start at 10.10am, and Mr Abbott was to leave at 10.45am so he could make the 30- to 40-minute car trip to a chartered plane at Essendon Airport and the one-hour flight to Canberra for the 12.30pm debate.

But the meet-and-greet at the clinic went overtime, as usual, and Mr Howard did not start speaking until 10.35am. Then Mr Costello spoke, followed by Mr Abbott. Then there was a press conference.

A sheepish Mr Abbott arrived at the press club at 1.03pm.

Ms Roxon had earlier offered to do her Abbott impersonation. “My office tells me it’s quite good,” she said.

After the minister arrived, Ms Roxon called him discourteous. “This Government is so out of touch and so arrogant that they won’t even plan their policy announcements to allow the minister to be able to meet his commitments.”

To cap it all off, the Government’s promise to bail out the Mersey Hospital in Tasmania went belly up.

All this in one day for the man who introduced into the political vernacular “shit happens”. (Phillip Coorey, Sydney Morning Herald, November 2007)

And now he is the leader of the Liberal Party of Australia.

This is a sorry, sorry day for Australia – Tony Abbott now has it within his power to do us over on any number of issues, the most major of which is the way in which he can scupper any attempts to create a way of combatting anthropogenic climate change (which he does believe in, I think, but seems to think any action to mitigate is futile).

Abbott, as I wrote, is a social conservative.

• He opposes abortions: In March 2004 he asked “Why isn’t the fact that 100,000 women choose to end their pregnancies regarded as a national tragedy approaching the scale, say, of Aboriginal life expectancy being 20 years less than that of the general community?” A conscience vote took place in February 2006, approving a measure that deprived the Health Minister of regulatory control of the abortion drug RU486. Abbott and previous Health Ministers had decided not to allow it to be made available. Abbott responded to the vote by calling for funding of alternative counselling to pregnant women through church-affiliated groups. During this time, Abbott criticised the acceptance of abortion, saying “… we have a bizarre double standard, a bizarre double standard in this country where someone who kills a pregnant woman’s baby is guilty of murder but a woman who aborts an unborn baby is simply exercising choice.” (From Wikipedia)
• He is in favour of a return to at-fault divorce.
• He is against same-sex marriage.
• He is against therapeutic stem cell research.
• One could go on…

Anyway. There is little he and I would agree on. I guess the Liberal Party have a right to choose him as their leader – of course they do. He should, at least, be able to heal some wounds between the Liberal Party and the National Party.

I wonder, though, how a man of the 1950s can offer viable solutions in our world today.

The following video is from ABC Fora, and it gives a good insight into Abbott and his positions (so does his book, Battlelines).