At Manly beach on Tuesday the sun christened another bright morning in Sydney. Its clear blue water roiled, tossing swimmers this way and that, and a pretty haze settled on the nearby Corso; on its cafes, surf shops, and the electorate office of Anthony John Abbott, the soon-to-be former prime minister of Australia.
Was it all a dream? Standing on the shore it was still difficult to believe that only hours before, Malcolm Turnbull had finally struck, deposing Australia’s 28th prime minister. Manly, on this idyllic morning, was surely the setting for tribute and fond remembrance.
John is not the man I’m looking for. He and his wife, Jane, run small businesses in the area, and are eating breakfast with their toddler son, a newspaper folded beside them.
“Abbott’s problem was he didn’t listen,” he tells Guardian Australia, making an incision in his poached egg. “He lied. He did what he wanted, when he wanted. All the promises he made, they didn’t mean shit.”
Jane confesses: “We’re probably the biggest anti-Abbott supporters you could come across.”
I venture that that’s surprising – the Abbott government was unashamedly in favour of small businesses like theirs. “Well, we’re pro gay marriage, he was anti gay marriage, even though it ran in his family,” she replies. “We’re pro refugees, we believe they’re human beings who are looking for a place to live, they’re not criminals, and he treated them like criminals.”
She is interrupted by her son, chirping he wants a cookie. “The paid parental leave,” she adds. “That was like his lead policy and it fell flat on its face almost immediately.”
I draw an imaginary line through Young Families with Small Businesses and survey the waterfront for an older demographic, Alan Jones’s people, the rusted-on Liberal loyalists of the city’s sparkling north.
Carmel Brady is walking her dog in a sunhat and bright-red shirt. Will she remember Tony Abbott warmly? “Oh, he was too rightwing for me,” she says. “He was opposed to gay marriage.”
Per the rightwing songbook, I suggest marriage equality is a third or fourth-order issue, far less important than the economy, or tackling the death cult.
Her eyes flash. “Well, our daughter’s gay. I’ve voted Liberal all my life, but I wouldn’t vote Liberal next time, because of gay marriage. I wouldn’t vote Labor, because they’re terrible. I’d vote Greens,” she says.
Unimpressive also was Abbott’s designation of himself as the minister for women, she says. “That’s a joke, to be honest.”
I’m not ready to give up on the retirees of the northern beaches, and see another older gentleman nursing a black coffee. Promisingly, he leafs through a copy of the Australian.
I open: “So last night was a dramatic one in Canb-”
“Just ask me the questions you want me to answer,” he interrupts.
And then, without waiting: “This man has been the most appalling prime minister that I’ve ever known. He hasn’t forgotten that he’s not the opposition leader, he behaves in every respect like an opposition leader. He doesn’t behave in any respect like a man who’s responsible for providing success for this country,” he says.
“I get quite emotional about it, because I’ve been a Liberal voter all my life. I’m still a Liberal voter, but that man is appalling. He builds a fence around himself with some of the most incompetent ministers we’ve ever had.
“The thing that broke the back for me was last Friday, when he was on stage, listening to Dutton make the most appalling remarks about people in the Pacific. And then he laughed with him! As if it was funny. I mean, this man is not a prime minister,” he says.
He is reluctant to give his name, but finally relents. “It’s Cairns,” he says. “C-A-I-R-N-S.”
I’m beginning to get desperate when, down a side road, I spot a well-built bloke wearing a black T-shirt. The back reads: “I am the infidel Allah warned you about.” The slogan belongs to RA Infidel, a website catering to veterans, especially those of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Surely this was a gentleman who appreciated a prime minister muscular in both physique and rhetoric.
Travis is his name. He shakes his head. “It was all the broken promises. The stuff he didn’t deliver. His attitude to the whole thing,” he says. “I just knew there was something wrong with him, but I can’t pick what that is.”
Perspiring now, I get brazen. “What about the way he took on the death cult, that was impressive, wasn’t it?” Travis gives a heavy shrug.
It is on my way back to the wharf, defeated, that I meet Keith sitting outside a medical practice. He watches the passers-by through tinted glasses and a Cuban-style cap.
“Are you from around here?” I ask.
“I live in the inner west,” he replies. My heart sinks.
“And what did you think of Tony Abbott?”
“I think he was doing a very good job, a very smart man, under very difficult conditions. Under a hostile Senate – and it’s still a hostile Senate – and he still managed to get things done,” he says. I brighten. “Go on,” I say.
“And this Mr Turnbull, I actually call him Turncoat, to be honest with you. Because everything that Labor did while he was in power, he supported them.”
I shake Keith’s hand vigorously. On the ferry ride back to Circular Quay, Manly glistens and shrinks into the distance. Time will pass, and memories of Tony Abbott – of knights and dames and winks and death cults – may one day take on a sheen of nostalgia, and the man will be remembered warmly. But not yet.
