This updated and expanded edition of David Marr’s 2012 Quarterly Essay of the same name includes a more in-depth account of Tony Abbott’s time at Oxford University, as well as an analysis of the public and political reaction to ‘the punch’ revealed by Marr in the original QE.

Despite Abbott’s comment in an ABC radio interview that the piece was ‘a more fair-minded and more generous assessment’ than he had expected, and the credit he gave to Marr for his ability ‘to step outside the standard leftist critique and appreciate that here was a more nuanced and complex character than perhaps many of the standard left-leaning critics would concede’, Abbott still did not allow Marr to directly quote him on anything they discussed in the months that Marr spent with him (aside from his denial that he punched the wall beside Barbara Ramjan). Marr has since called this refusal ‘gutless’, although you won’t find this kind of overt negative judgement in Political Animal, where I think Marr does make a genuine attempt at a ‘fair-minded assessment’. Several reviewers of the original Quarterly Essay found it to be a predictably partisan account, but for me the end result contained much more objectivity and balance than I had expected.

Particularly interesting was the fact that in 1987, after several years in a seminary training for the priesthood, Abbott decided instead to enter politics but was unsure of which party to join. He wrote at the time that the Liberal Party was ‘without soul, direction or inspiring leadership’. If Abbott wins the 2013 election, Marr concludes that Australia can expect his particular brand of ‘toxic politics’ and brutal negative style of Opposition to continue long into the future. Abbott’s views might not have much soul or be inspiring, but he has certainly taken Australian politics in a new and unsettling direction.

Kara Nicholson