Tenacious Tony’s praise for Trump shows his true colours

Peter FitzSimons’ interviews are always worth reading, as is this one with Tony Abbott (“Abbott’s take on old friends and foes and that misogyny speech”, October 12). For me, the takeaway message is that Abbott hasn’t changed. He is still campaigning, putting forth his world view as the right one, and everybody else is out of step. He is still bitter about his defeat in the safest of Liberal seats, which supercharged the rise of independents around Australia, and that is perhaps the biggest threat to the Coalition now. His statement that “there was more good than bad in Trump’s speech to the UN last week” certainly puts Tony in the Trump camp, at least as far as weaponising migration, and that is where the hard right will campaign. Gary Barnes, Mosman

Peter FitzSimons and Tony Abbott. It is possible to be civil.Credit: @Peter_Fitz / X

Interesting that in his interview with Fitz, Tony Abbott, commenting on early historical frontier massacres, says that “a lot rely on oral history written down many, many years after the event, so are not reliable”. How then does he reconcile his staunch Catholic beliefs, as the earliest of the four Gospels was written some 40 years after the death of Jesus, by “Mark”, whose real identity remains unknown? There is little direct historical evidence regarding the events of this period, and the other three “Gospels” were written over the course of almost a century after Jesus’ death, making them in Abbott’s words “not reliable”. Alan Marel, North Curl Curl

Fitzy has a particular way of doing interviews, and one thing is sure: Fitzy never changes his views to make an easier interview with the person. This interview with Abbott was no different. It asked tough questions without being intimidating. I am not a fan of Abbott, but he was sincere, equally strong about his views that were opposite to Fitzy’s, and a thick-skinned politician at core without being intimidated. Mukul Desai, Hunters Hill

In an age of increasing vitriol, Tony Abbott comes across as reasonable person having no vindictiveness in his post-political life. His revelation that during the 2019 election campaign “people were almost spitting at me because I was supposedly destroying the planet or supposedly a friend of paedophiles, and possibly a paedophile myself because I hadn’t repudiated George Pell” says much about his left-wing opponents. Abbott is worthy of respect for what he has achieved and his personal qualities. Riley Brown, Bondi Beach

In this household, we often lament the lack of “civil conversations” in our public life, but the connection between Tony Abbott and Peter FitzSimons was a fine example of the civil conversation. Elaine and Mick Prest, Marrickville

Infighting and irrelevance

As Jacqueline Maley points out so eloquently (“Taylor and Libs’ common problem”, October 12), the Libs are lost in their own internal battles and remain an irrelevance. Judging by the self-righteous denial apparent in Peter FitzSimons’ interview of their elder statesman Tony Abbott (“Abbott’s take on old friends and foes and that misogyny speech”, October 12), they are going to be in the political wilderness for the foreseeable future. If they are listening to his sermons on women, climate change and First Nations they will never escape their wet paper bag. Martyn Frappell, Bulli

It was lack of credible alternative policies which lead to the Libs’ demise in the last federal election. Blind Freddie can see that infighting takes away the focus and energy to provide the opposition’s policies. Federal Libs need to urgently heed Confucius’ maxim: The true mistake isn’t the error, but the refusal to correct it. Steve Ngeow, Chatswood

Teachers’ plight

Adam Voigt gives valuable insights and analysis of the plight of teachers in NSW schools (“Teachers choose mining jobs over classroom”, October 12). For many the choice is clear. Head to more prosperous pastures (such as mining) and forgo the expectations and pressures of classroom life. They, too, have families to raise. The dedication and challenges for a teacher today are enormous, but without the proper funding, respect, community appreciation or monetary gain that it deserves. For teachers overseas in the UK and US this has long been the case. Unless we maintain our teacher numbers and gainfully employ many others with training and necessary experience, teaching and learning in our classrooms will fail further. And shamefully, it is our children who will be most affected. Janice Creenaune, Austinmer

Feral fight

The myth is that a cat has nine lives (a reflection on their resilience and tenacious ability to survive in a wide range of circumstances) (“How AI could help in the fight against feral cats”, October 12). A more astute way of interpreting this is that across our wide brown (and green) land, the feral cat survives by devouring countless lives. Given there can be upwards of 5 million of these feral cats, the toll they exact every 24 hours is devastating on lizard, frog, bird and marsupial populations. Not to be conveniently ignored is that there are over 3 million pet cats, which often kill wildlife during their expression of independence during their daily or nightly saunters. Sure, there are other threats to the existence of the ancient lineage of Australian fauna, such as continued habitat clearance (please note, state and federal governments) and climate change. The environment is suffering from a thousand cuts and all have to stopped and remediated. Predation by feral and domestic animals on this continent’s vulnerable original creatures is one of the deepest cuts. Steve Dillon, Thirroul

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