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10 reasons Prime Minister Tony Abbott had to go.

 

If you need a reminder of why Prime Minister Tony Abbott needed to go.

Here are just some of them:

1. He appointed himself Minister for Women, but didn’t really get us.

The man once said this: “I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons.”

Related: Two years in, let’s celebrate all that Tony Abbott has achieved as Minister for Women.

Granted, he said it during his university days in the 70s (let’s hope he was extremely intoxicated), but can a man who once believed that women were simply inferior because of their biology ever change his spots?

Shhh. Nobody tell him he married one.

Based on this comment in 2010, those stereotypical gender roles seem to be fairly ingrained: “What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it’s going to go up in price and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up.”

When asked what his greatest achievement as Minister for Women was, he famously responded that it was repealing the carbon tax. Go figure.

2. His backwards attitude to marriage equality.

Abbott refused to allow his Coalition colleagues a free vote on the issue of same-sex marriage, ensuring Australia remains far behind the eight ball and continue to deny gay people equal rights – despite the majority of Australians supporting marriage equality.

3. He completed screwed us with the Paid Parental Leave scheme.

He told us his signature Paid Parental Leave scheme would see families paid the full wage of a working parent for six months up to a cap of $75,000. He stole the female vote.

Then he dumped the package, leaving working mothers who meet the means test with the same, old, meagre scheme of 18 weeks’ pay at minimum wage.

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Hey kids, hope those clothes still fit you in three years’ time.

4. His stance on refugees.

After slashing the nation’s refugee intake, Abbott reluctantly announced that Australia will accept only 12,000 extra refugees from Syria (and that Christians would get priority) as Europe struggles under the brunt of a migrant crisis.

His government failed to act on repeated allegations of sexual and physical abuse of asylum seekers at Nauru and gagged doctors, teachers and nurses from speaking publicly about conditions in immigration detention centres with the threat of jail time.

5. He awarded a Knighthood to Prince Philip on Australia Day.

Rather than choose one of the many worthy Australians, the loyal monarchist chose to that the Queen’s 94-year-old husband was one of two white men worthy of Knighthood.

Our newest Knight.

6. He made huge cuts to the national broadcasters after promising not to.

Another election promise flew out the window when Abbott cut $43.5 million from the ABC and SBS. Then he spent $10 million changing the name of customs and immigration to Australian Border Force.

7. He held cutting edge views on sexuality and fertility.

He told his daughters that virginity was “the greatest gift you can give someone”.

He opposes stem cell research and euthanasia, tried to block the introduction of abortion pill RU-486 and has made divorce more expensive to obtain.

8. He ignores the science on climate change.

Abbott says climate change is “absolute crap” and laughed along with Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s hilarious joke last week at the expense of those with “water lapping at (their) door”.

9. He said remote Aboriginal communities were “lifestyle choices”.

When up to 150 remote Aboriginal communities in Western Australia were slated for closure due to budget cuts, which would see more than 1,000 people relocated, Abbott said “what we can’t do is endlessly subsidise lifestyle choices”.

10. He keeps eating raw onions in public and we don’t know why.

We still have no idea why our he keeps eating raw onions. Perhaps it is to show how manly he is. Or how even onions can’t make him cry. But we could not have a PM with constant onion breath.

Onion-eating: Not the most important skill in a leader of a nation.