View from the Street: Tony Abbott tells Australia: 'No, you’re the problem'

It's literally a popularity contest

Government is determined by popularity. That's why we have a popular vote and the people with the most votes get to be the government. Even a child understands that.

In fact, "popular" comes from the Latin word "popularis" meaning "by, of, or for the people" - the same linguistic root as "population". How much clearer does it need to be?

And we don't have to get snidely etymological about it either - political parties pay vast sums of money to polling companies for the specific reason that they want to know whether the people like what they're doing.

Thus you can be certain that any government who says "it's not a popularity contest" is declaring that they're not interested in hearing what you think. You know, especially from all that "electronic graffiti" and everything.

But back to the speech…

"All governments go through difficult patches… this will be a test of character. What do you do when you have a bad patch? You can buckle down to business or not. But failing to buckle down to business makes a bad situation worse."

Um … aside from the less than stellar syntax, surely that depends on what the bad patch is, and whether you created that bad patch through your own actions. For example, by responding to tanking prices for commodities by expaning mining and pursuing an imaginary budget surplus, for example, or selling off insanely profitable assets like Medibank Private (which filled the public coffers with a staggering $1.366 billion in dividends and taxes over the last four years before being sold off).

By way of analogy, if you suffer from genital pain and your solution is to hit said genitals with a hammer, then ignoring all expert counsel by shrugging it off as a bad patch and hammering with renewed vigour is unlikely to ultimately solve the problem.

Sometimes not buckling down is not only the right decision; it's the only option that doesn't end with blood, tears, and very uncomfortable questions from incredulous and horrified onlookers.

"You wouldn't like me when I'm angry"

That being said, the big message of the speech wasn't to the people. It was, like most of what Abbott has said in public lately, directed at the Liberal Party.

Emphasising that he didn't want to return to the chaos of the last Labor government, he laid out a clear message to anyone thinking of a leadership challenge. "It's the people that hire, and frankly it's the people that should fire… The last thing you want to do is make your difficulties worse. I like my colleagues, I trust my colleagues, I trust my colleagues above all else to want to do the right thing by themselves, by the party, by the government and by the country, and the last thing that they'd want to do is make a bad situation worse."

You'll note that the "bad situation" Abbott describes is … well, Abbott. And attacking him would make it worse, he says. Hmm … could this - no, surely not? But … maybe, just maybe, could our PM secretly be … the Incredible Hulk?

After all, he's hardly credible at this point - so he's already halfway there!

So, who owns your government?

It's been an awkward sort of a day for the Australian Electoral Commission to release the political donation data from 2013-2014, showing the degree to which this government is beholden to interests other than, say, yours.

Who got the most scratch? The federal Liberal Party with $43 million in donations (up from $11.4 million in 2012/13), Labor reported $40 million (up from $14.5 million) and the Greens $6.4 million (from $6.3 million. Well, they're consistent). Palmer United accepted donations of $28.8 million, though nearly $26 million of which came from Clive Palmer's own companies. Ah, synergy.

Now, obviously that era also encompassed an election. So, who paid what to elect who?

The Labor Party is evidently owned by Chinese investment companies Kingold Investments ($635,000) and a mysterious Chinese benefactor named Dr Zi Chun Wang, who ponied up $850,000. A lot of their other donations came, somewhat predictably, from unions.

The Liberals owe lucrative favours to UK Lord Ashcroft, a notorious lover of tax havens who stumped up $250,000 and Paul Ramsay Holdings donated $600,000, which might explain why the whole corporate tax loophole-closing thing Joe Hockey was harrumphing about has now been quietly deep-sixed.

Other companies that own the government include mining company Adani ($49,500), ANZ Bank ($150,000), Australian Salary Packaging Industry Association ($250,000), Balmoral Pastoral ($400,000), tobacco giant Philip Morris ($93,000), and a number of other energy, mining and supermarket giants. You can read Crikey's comprehensive breakdown here.

So, keep that in mind any time talk of competition or tax avoidance or environmental policy or cigarette packaging comes up or, more likely, doesn't come up at all. These companies didn't donate all that cash for nothing, after all.

Speaking of who owes who what…

Merit: noun, 1) The quality of being particularly good or worthy; 2) Effect granted by proximity to Tony Abbott

As today's speech made clear, the PM is there because of his own undeniable merit. He earned it through the sweat of his brow, after all, and you jerks in Cabinet and the nation can stop trying to take it away from him.

We saw similar merit in his amazing daughter Frances, who is so enormously talented that she was awarded a secret, not-advertised, requirement-free scholarship for which she didn't even apply, by an institution that explicitly denies giving out scholarships. That's just because she's so darn merity, surely!

And now a similar level of talent has manifested in Abbott's friends - specifically Greg Sheridan, Abbott's BFF whose skills have been so honed by being one of the editors for The Australian that he'd obviously be perfect to be Australia's High Commissioner to Singapore.

He turned the gig down, but not before it was discussed seriously by the government after the 2013 election. And it would have probably remained just a beautiful dream had editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell not confirmed it on Friday.

"I guess the offer was probably quite attractive but he has a pretty good job at the Oz too," he shrugged to Fairfax. "I'm relaxed about it all. People get offered jobs by government all the time."

That's true. Especially if they're buddies with the PM.

The cocktail hour: there are great things about this nation, despite the above

Like, for example, baby echidnas! They're called puggles, for freak's sake! Puggles! Best.

Never forget that ours is a genuinely great country, and it's just that we could be doing better at running it right at the moment. We snark because we care.

Keep that in mind as you throw a strong one back, friends, and see you back here tomorrow. Cheers!