In the lead-up to the last election, we wondered what would become of arch-conservative Liberal senator Eric Abetz now that he’d been bumped down to third place on the Tasmanian Senate ticket and running what turned out to be an unsuccessful “vote below the line” campaign.
The election was the end of a tumultuous year for the senator, where power seemed to leak from his right faction, so long dominant in the state.
So we were delighted to see the announcement that the Australian Monarchist League has hired him as chairman to lead the campaign against Australia becoming a republic.
Our favourite detail? The preemptive annoyance at media bias that hasn’t happened yet:
We request that whenever the Hon Matt Thistlewaite, Assistant Minister for the Republic, Mr Peter FitzSimons or any government official is interviewed Mr Abetz be provided with equal time to adequately respond.
It’s only fair. Crikey also requests that any time FitzSimons is interviewed that we are given equal or greater airtime in response.
