Forget CPAC, we’ll never see conservatives like Tony Abbott again

Your correspondent made the decision not to attend last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference Australia (CPAC), and judging by Cam Wilson’s excellent report, it appears to have been a good choice.

My memory of these is that they’re funny for about 90 minutes, and then the grey, sludgy wall of the speakers’ obsessions and delusions — and above all their focus on the left — starts to overwhelm you. 

But I would have liked to see Tony Abbott in full flight, telling the faithful that the times would once again suit them because they were, after all, right. The old Abbott, the one who looks like a man assembled from cuts of meat, like an animatronic butcher’s shop window.