Abbott's worst two decisions while PM were, IMHO:

Killing our nascent Fibre-to-the-Home rollout which had just begun after years of planning by the previous government. We now use problematic mish mash of slow copper instead of fibre (Murdoch wanted this so Tony gave it up for him).

Killing the mining tax for his donors. This would would have returned billions for our country. We could have begun a sovereign wealth fund like Norway who have over $1 Trillion in theirs. Australia also makes minimal profit from gas exports. Qatar exports less than us but their country profits 2600% more per year than Australia.

Domestic buyers on the east coast of Australia now pay one of the highest prices in the world for gas. Double the price our exporters are buying it for (and they have liquefaction and transport costs included).

Don't forget scrapping basically every environmental initiative that the Rudd and Gillard governments put in place, pretty much on his own personal conviction that climate change is not human-caused.

Since hired as a UK trade advisor:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54027762

I had assumed the Tony Abbott in recent UK news was a different person to the former Australian PM. Thanks for the correction!

I wouldn't say he was our Trump. Our Trump is Clive Palmer, down to the grifting and ripping off subcontractors and employees and suing people.

Abbott was more our McConnell, happy to tear down political norms and standard parliamentary practice while claiming to defend it. He was a "good" opposition leader in that he basically was in opposition to everything proposed by the government, not for good reason, just because.

He didn't last long as an actual leader, because that requires positive actions, not just oppositional or destructive ones.

He won't be missed from our political domain.

I think your Trump-Palmer comparison is decent, but not sure about McConnell. Something that seemed key to Abbott was his focus on very repetitive and simple statements - the three word slogans (stop the boats, axe the tax; hardly discouraged "ditch the witch"). Not saying there hasn't been similar before, but he was particularly effective with it. Trump has used similar tactics (build the wall, lock her up, etc), which might've encouraged OP's point.

He triumphantly claimed several times that a particular issue or legislation was now "Dead, buried, cremated"

Sounds like GW Bush.

I don't get it, is there something noteworthy about eating a raw onion?

Yes and no. It was the pinnacle in a series of bizzare behaviour from Tony while he was the Prime Minister. Certainly its the one people most remember of him. Keep in mind he ate it with the skin on as well. I think its also something people look out for, with the previous PM Kevin Rudd being somewhat infamous for eating his own ear wax on live TV.

When I was working on an archive project for the ABC, "tony eating onion" or some variation was the most common thing people searched for in the system when they first started using it.

He doubled down and did it again another time.

More bizarre was that time he froze and didn't speak for 30 seconds when asked a difficult question by a reporter about his "shit happens" comment. Justin Trudeau did the same thing recently when asked a question regarding Trump.

> I think its also something people look out for, with the previous PM Kevin Rudd being somewhat infamous for eating his own ear wax on live TV.

… as a stunt? On a dare? Why?

It was during a long question time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ipvdBnU8F8

The earwax thing was during a long boring session in parliament, so not exactly Live TV

Oh, well that explains it, then. Perfectly legitimate behaviour. /s

The context: he was on a PR tour of a farm (or factory or something), and grabbed it from a pile and just started eating it like it was an apple, whilst continuing the tour. It caught the public attention at how normal he made eating a raw onion look.

> grabbed it from a pile and just started eating it like it was an apple,

Sounds like a sociopath.

Time to put out an alert on raw onion-eaters

When you use it to hide the breath of an alcoholic, yes.

He ate it with the skin on, too.

Yeah same. It's pretty common for restaurants and households to have raw onion in the salad (at least in north India). Unusual for someone to eat them with the skin though.

But that would be chopped or otherwise separated onion right? Not eating an onion the way one would eat an apple.

My fiancée has been to the Azores and told me she's seen old people eat onions like apples there

Prior to becoming prime minister, he was a Rhodes Scholar and then a Master of Arts at Oxford, a journalist for multiple papers, and a fairly effective lobbyist and politician.

His policies were regressive even for the liberal party's right, he was needlessly belligerent as PM, and I didn't like him or vote for his party. However, he wasn't an uneducated or stupid man, and he wasn't an inexperienced political outsider like Trump.

He was a Rhodes Scholar, so he's probably pretty smart.

I’m not saying he is stupid. But he was fundamentally unsuited at being a Prime Minister. He left the government in absolute chaos.