In 2016 Savva published a book about Tony Abbott and the small coterie of insiders who helped him to govern. In it, she talks about Abbott’s problems. I wrote at the time:
One of the main ones was that all decisions seemed to emanate from a small group of select people in the leader's office, including his chief-of-staff. The type of collegial consultation that members of Parliament are apparently used to in a Westminster democracy were thrown out the door. A tiny clique was doing everything to control the message, but when the leader's popularity failed to turn around people outside that group turned on the leader and replaced him just like that.
That chief-of-staff, Peta Credlin, now writes a column for The Australian, where Savva used to run her words. Savva also used to work for Nine Chairman Peter Costello, so the current move is as cosy as Abbott’s counsellors were.
Savva is best known to the general population for her appearances on the ABC’s Sunday chat show, ‘Insiders’, which gets talked about at length on social media. One thing Savva didn’t talk about in her book was the one-term government we’ve seen so much of in recent years in Australia. As I wrote at the time of her book’s appearance:
But this phenomenon of one-term governments is something that the commentariat will have to one day really take a close, hard look at. So far noone has really made the attempt. I think it has something to do with the new public sphere in the age of social media. But a lot of people would despise me for even suggesting something like this.
It'd be very interesting if Savva could turn her attention to such things as these because so far the quantity of discussion about the shiftiness of politics in this country hasn’t percolated through the community to any significant degree. People are aware that something’s changed, but they are not all saying the same thing. Awareness is limited to responses to journalists and politicians who castigate the broader community when debate turns ugly. The common people revel in the icy sobriquets thrown out by the wounded.
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