Bonhomie filled the air at the University of Sydney’s great hall on Friday night when a crowd of alumni and friends gathered for a special occasion: the installation of a portrait of former prime minister and student politics brawler Tony Abbott. The painting, by artist Simon Fieldhouse, was commissioned by St John’s College, the Roman Catholic university college where Abbott lived in 1976.
A portrait of Tony Abbott for St John’s College by artist Simon Fieldhouse.Credit:Simon Fieldhouse/ Supplied
Former St John’s house president and top barrister Guy Reynolds was in attendance, fresh from successfully convincing the High Court to allow Prime Minister Scott Morrison to select his hand-picked candidates to run in key seats. So was NSW Chief Justice Andrew Bell. The Australian’s conservative columnist Janet Albrechtsen was there too with her investment banker partner John O’Sullivan.
However, one special guest had to drop out at the last minute: Abbott himself. The former Rhodes scholar has been diagnosed with COVID-19, forcing him into isolation. Abbott delivered his speech to the crowd, which included his sisters and daughters, via Zoom. Because of his diagnosis, Abbott has been forced to cancel plans to travel to Western Australia this week to raise funds for several Liberal candidates and campaign with them.
It makes one wonder: have any scientists studied whether eating raw onions helps speed up your recovery from the virus?
Fieldhouse’s painting shows Abbott clutching a set of rosary beads and wearing his trademark blue tie. In the background a man stumbles around with a knife in his back, an allusion to Malcolm Turnbull’s 2015 political assassination of Abbott. “There’s a lot of things Tony says that I don’t agree with,” Fieldhouse, a self-described Kevin Rudd fan, told CBD. “As a person I get along quite well with him.”
The former Liberal leader is not the only prominent ex-politician to be felled by COVID of late. Former NSW Premier Bob Carr has tested positive, meaning he will miss Monday’s launch of Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons’ latest book, a history of the Sydney Opera House. “My once athletic vocal cords reduced to scratchy razor blades,” the steel-cut oats aficionado lamented in a text to FitzSimons. “I won’t be singing Rigoletto as planned at your launch.”
TO THE POLLS
Scott Morrison’s main mission on Sunday was hot-footing it to Government House, the second most important building in the leafy Canberra suburb of Yarralumla. Number one, of course, is the legendary Yarralumla kebab shop. Before meeting the Governor-General to kickstart the election campaign, the PM squeezed in some eleventh hour board appointments.
Morrison’s 6.22am press release was the latest in a flurry of appointments to plum postings before the government went into caretaker mode. This time around it was the board of the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympics Games Organising Committee. In probably the last bipartisan act we’ll see for the next six weeks, the announcement was co-signed by Queensland Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.
