All politicians in the deepest valley harbour a belief that, since politics is such a volatile and unpredictable profession, they can always return to the highest mountain.
After all, history is littered with examples of great political comebacks: Menzies, Churchill, de Gaulle, Nixon, Wilson, Howard, Rudd and, of course, Turnbull.
You might think this eternal optimism accounts for Tony Abbott’s decision to re-contest his Sydney seat of Warringah at the next election. Or you might think the former prime minister is staying in parliament because he just can’t get a job doing anything else.
But you’d be wrong. For Abbott, politics is a vocation, not a springboard for eternal political leadership or financial rapaciousness. It is his way of giving something back to the country. Yes, as he knows from first-hand experience, politics is a dispiriting business. But he also believes, as John Howard once said, it is among the highest and noblest forms of public service.
Indeed, Abbott’s commitment to public service for more than two decades has been exemplary: humble backbencher, junior minister, senior minister, leader of the opposition, prime minister, not to mention his volunteer work as a surf life-saver, fire-fighter and community worker in remote Indigenous communities.
Abbott is one of those increasingly rare politicians to have followed a vocation rather than simply to have sought a way of living off the taxpayer.
As unfashionable as it is to say so, there are very few people in public life with finer personal qualities than Abbott.
During much of his six years as Liberal leader from 2009 to 2015, he was reviled, humiliated, plotted against and finally betrayed by his own colleagues. Everybody would have understood if he had quit politics at the weekend.
Since he lost the Liberal leadership in September, Abbott has made a few bitter criticisms of his colleagues, but no more than Malcolm Turnbull after he lost his party’s leadership in the summer of 2009-10 and far less than Kevin Rudd after his knifing in the winter of 2010.
Abbott has not taken the usual failed politician’s route and enriched himself as a lobbyist or company director. Nor is he likely to write a self-indulgent memoir that seems virtually obligatory for most former politicians.
But Abbott was not nearly as bad a prime minister as people say. From the outset, he was dealt a severe handicap: an uncooperative and reform-averse Senate.
He was courageous and right to support a tough stance on border protection, which helped boost public confidence in an orderly, large-scale legal immigration policy. Abbott also stuck to other commitments that resonate with the electorate, most notably the repeal of the widely unpopular carbon tax, which stands the test of time given the failure of the UN to reach a legally binding, enforceable and verifiable deal at Paris last month.
Furthermore, he is a far better prime minister than his two predecessors.
I know this claim flies in the face of conventional wisdom among the Canberra smart set: that Kevin Rudd was far more popular with the Australian people and Julia Gillard possessed political skills and arts that eluded Abbott.
But although Rudd was in the political stratosphere in 2008-09 and Gillard did win over those independents to form a minority government in 2010, their undoubted gifts were superficial and laden with deceit.
Ultimately, Rudd and Gillard bled authority as if from an open wound and undermined public confidence in our democracy – and bequeathed deficits as far as the eye can see.
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