Put Out Your Onions: Tony Abbott Has Been Booted From Parliament

It appears Tony Abbott has lost the seat of Warringah to Zali Steggall, and will be leaving Parliament to enjoy a sad retirement eating onions or whatever it is he does to relax.

I think I speak for most of the country when I say that’s a relief.

Sky News called the seat around 7:30pm AEST, less than two hours after counting began. That’s pretty early, but the numbers so far speak for themselves.

At current count, the result in Warringah shows a Zali Steggall holding around 62 percent of the two candidate preferred vote, compared to Abbott’s 38 percent. On first preferences, that’s close to a 13 percent swing against Tony Abbott — a pretty massive swing. Votes will continue to be counted throughout the night, but some media organisations have started to call it: Abbott’s done.

Tony Abbott has held Warringah for almost 25 years, and the seat has been in Liberal Party hands since the dawn of time.

That makes Steggall’s impending win a pretty huge deal, though not altogether a surprising one. Abbott has been making headlines for being an out of touch doofus for quite some time now — just two days ago, he was dragged by the nation for trying to use the death of beloved former Prime Minister Bob Hawke for political point scoring.

Then there’s the time he bet someone the climate wouldn’t change in the next decade, the countless times he said terrible things about asylum seekers, the time he campaigned against marriage equality, the time he ate a raw onion, the time he decided he was the white bloke to speak for Indigenous people, and so much more. We could go on, but why bother, because hopefully he’ll just fuck right off now!

He’s certainly done that tonight, that’s for sure — perhaps anticipating how brutally he was about to be owned, Abbott barred all media from his post-election event, only letting a single camera and very few “approved media” in for the tiny snippet of the night where he’ll be speaking (presumably not a happy speech).

We’ll keep you updated as the night goes on, but for now, it’s probably time to start putting out your onions.

Rip toney

— Bec Shaw (@Brocklesnitch) May 18, 2019