Backlash grows against British trade role for Australian ex-PM Abbott

Sydney, Sept. 4, (dpa/GNA) – Pressure mounted on the British government on Friday to drop plans to appoint former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to a top trade role, with critics labelling him “misogynistic.”

Abbott arrived in London this week ahead of an expected appointment as a senior adviser for Britain’s negotiations on global post-Brexit deals.

But many opposition lawmakers have objected to Abbott’s potential appointment due to his conservative views and past comments, while others have cast doubt on his trade expertise.

Labour’s Women and Equalities Secretary Marsha de Cordova on Friday tweeted that it is “time for the PM to do the right thing,” after sending a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government warning Abbott’s views “are both dangerous and divisive.”

Green Party lawmaker Caroline Lucas tweeted that Abbott was “a misogynist bigot, opposed to equal rights, a climate denier, Australia’s worst-ever PM and someone who admits himself that his word can’t be trusted.”

Abbott has previously said that he felt “a bit threatened” by homosexuality, and in 2012 was accused of misogyny by fellow former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard in an explosive speech in parliament.

David Henig, UK director of the European Centre For International Political Economy, a trade-focused think-tank, said Abbott was also “not an expert in trade.”
“And there are many experts in trade who are neither a homophobe, a misogynist, or to add one on, a climate change denier,” Henig tweeted.

Trade policy consultant and former Australian trade negotiator Dmitry Grozoubinski also said it was “pushing it” to call Abbott a trade expert.

“By his own admission his contribution to Australian FTAs [free-trade agreements] was to tell negotiators not to sweat [on] the technical details and to just get [them done],” Grozoubinski tweeted.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended Abbott’s trade credentials on Friday but sidestepped questions about his views on women and homosexuality.

“He knows a lot about trade,” Morrison told reporters in Canberra. “I wish the former prime minister well.”

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock was asked live on Sky News on Thursday whether he thought Abbott was “the right person to represent us, even if he’s a homophobic misogynist?”

Hancock replied that Abbott was “also an expert in trade.”

Responding to Hancock’s remark, Labour lawmaker David Lammy tweeted: “So the government admits Tony Abbott is a homophobe and a misogynist; it just doesn’t care.”

Family and former Liberal party colleagues jumped to Abbott’s defence.

His sister Christine Forster, who is in a same-sex relationship, said politicians and commentators were labelling Abbott a “‘mysoginist and homophobe’ for the purpose of scoring cheap political points.”

“As a woman who has always been part of his life and who came out to him as gay in my early 40s, I know incontrovertibly that Tony is either of those things,” Forster said in a statement posted to Twitter on Friday.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, who served under Abbott, told Australia’s Sky News that “not everyone will agree with him, but people are entitled to their views, and that’s the way things work in a democracy.”

GNA