Do we like Tony Abbott?
Our score: 2 out of 10. Years of campaigning against marriage equality, the trans remarks and a seat on a climate-sceptic think tank's board outweigh the remote-community effort.
Abbott spent years as the Liberal member for Warringah and rose to be prime minister. He made a name as a politician who turns up. As PM he moved his office into a tent compound near Nhulunbuy to keep a promise to spend a week each year in a remote Indigenous location.
The part LGBTQ+ readers will care about is the 2017 marriage postal survey. PinkNews reported that he lashed out at “transgender marriage” and “radical gay sex education” while campaigning for No. In a US speech afterwards he said the campaign had “mobilised thousands of new activists” and suggested they would stay active.
The trans remarks cost him a friendship. Catherine McGregor, the trans activist, said she ended it over his “contemptuous dismissal of trans identity” and not over his marriage stance. In his own opinion piece Abbott wrote that “a man is not a woman just because he wants to be”.
His votes line up with his words. They Vote For You records that he consistently voted against same-sex marriage equality, for a same-sex marriage plebiscite and for celebrants being able to refuse to marry same-sex couples. It also shows him voting against extending government benefits to same-sex couples and against protecting reproductive bodily autonomy. In 2016 he told Sky News he still opposed same-sex marriage.
On the planet, he joined the board of trustees of the Global Warming Policy Foundation in 2023, which Australia's Climate Council has called a “climate denying group”. He said climate policy makes electricity less affordable and less reliable without meaningfully cooling the planet. His votes match: he almost always voted against a carbon price, generally against the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, and generally against ARENA.
ABC Fact Check tested 34 of his claims as opposition leader and PM. It rated 11 false, 4 true and 19 partly accurate. His weakest areas were the economy and the environment, and its most-read check rated his claim that marriage has historically been between a man and a woman as incorrect. Employment was his best area, with two true and none false.