..he went into the university election season and lost - to a woman - his campaign for the presidency of the SRC.
Barbara Ramjan beat him hands down. She was of the left but her work as the SRC's welfare officer made her a popular figure on the campus. The night her victory was declared, the SRC offices saw wild scenes of bad-boy behaviour: flashing, mooning, jeering and abuse. Abbott watched all this. His loss was a very public disappointment. He approached Ramjan. She thought he was coming over to congratulate her. "But no, that's not what he wanted," she recalls. "He came up to within an inch of my nose and punched the wall on either side of my head." Thirty-five years later she recalls with cold disdain what he did. "It was done to intimidate." Abbott tells me ( Maher) he has no recollection of the incident: "It would be profoundly out of character had it occurred." ....
10:07AM Monday Sep 17, 2012
*PREFERENCES FOR AREA AND AGE WERE ALLOCATED BY HOW PREFERENCES FLOWED NATIONALLY AND BY STATE IN 2010 ELECTION. ALL FIGURES ARE IN PERCENTAGES. THE ACNIELSEN/AGE POLL IS CONDUCTED ON THE TELEPHONE NATIONWIDE. INTERVIEWS WERE CONDUCTED ON SEPTEMBER 13 - 15 WITH 1400 ELECTORS. THE MAXIMUM MARGIN OF ERROR TO APPLY TO THIS SAMPLE IS APPROXIMATELY 2.6%. UNCOMMITTED VOTERS (4%) WERE REDISTRIBUTED. FIGURES MAY NOT ADD TO 100% DUE TO ROUNDING.
*PREFERENCES FOR AREA AND AGE WERE ALLOCATED BY HOW PREFERENCES FLOWED NATIONALLY AND BY STATE IN 2010 ELECTION. ALL FIGURES ARE IN PERCENTAGES. THE ACNIELSEN/AGE POLL IS CONDUCTED ON THE TELEPHONE NATIONWIDE. INTERVIEWS WERE CONDUCTED ON SEPTEMBER 13 - 15 WITH 1400 ELECTORS. THE MAXIMUM MARGIN OF ERROR TO APPLY TO THIS SAMPLE IS APPROXIMATELY 2.6%. UNCOMMITTED VOTERS (4%) WERE REDISTRIBUTED. FIGURES MAY NOT ADD TO 100% DUE TO ROUNDING.
Labor cautious about polls, Coalition dismissive
LABOR'S primary vote and Julia Gillard's approval are continuing to improve, although switching to Kevin Rudd could turn the government's current prospect of defeat into the chance of victory, according to the Age/Nielsen poll.
Tony Abbott's approval has fallen 3 percentage points to a record low of 36 per cent as controversy has raged about his character, but the opposition would still get a 3 per cent swing for a comfortable win in an election held now. The Coalition is on a two-party vote of 53 per cent, down 1 point in three weeks, to Labor's 47 per cent, up a point.
Ms Gillard leads Mr Abbott as preferred PM by 3 points: she is on 47 per cent (up 1 point) while Mr Abbott is on 44 per cent (down 1). In an important finding in light of claims about Mr Abbott having problems with women and an allegation of intimidatory behaviour towards a fellow student in 1977, he is 12 points behind as preferred PM among women, but leads by 5 points among men.
While the results generally are good for Ms Gillard, marking a change in political mood as the debate swings off the carbon tax and on to the PM's positive agenda, the comparison with what might happen if Mr Rudd was reinstated will be used by the increasingly active Rudd camp as it steps up its agitation for change.
Labor's primary vote has increased 2 points to 34 per cent in the poll of 1400 taken Thursday to Saturday, in the wake of Ms Gillard's absence from the public stage after the death of her father. The ALP vote has risen steadily by about 2 points a month over the past four months - a total of 8 points from 26 per cent to 34 per cent. The Coalition remains on 45 per cent; its primary vote has fallen 4 points since early May.
The Greens are down 1 point to 10 per cent, which is a fall of 4 points since early June.
The PM's approval has risen 3 points to 42 per cent; her disapproval, on 53 per cent, is down 4 points. She has a net approval of minus 11, which is 7 points better than last month. This is her highest approval and lowest disapproval since May 2011.
Disapproval of Mr Abbott has risen by 2 points to 59 per cent, a new personal high. His net approval has worsened by 5 points to minus 23 per cent, a new personal low and the lowest for an opposition leader since August 2009, shortly before Malcolm Turnbull lost the job.
Since early June, Ms Gillard has substantially narrowed Mr Rudd's lead as preferred Labor leader, while fewer people than before think the ALP should change leaders. ..... <cont>
Liberal frontbencher Christopher Pyne said the polls were a result of a Labor campaign of personal attacks and vilification.
"The Labor Party has spent the last two weeks and the better part of the last few months demonising Tony Abbott," he told ABC television. "They want to destroy his character."
Mr Pyne was adamant the Nielsen poll result, which showed twice as many voters prefer Malcolm Turnbull to Mr Abbott as leader, would "absolutely not" prompt any leadership tensions.
#qanda should be interesting tonight with Greg Sheridan no doubt being questioned by pinkos about his response to this
http://www.scribd.com/doc/106098331/As-You-Are-Probably-Aware
Tony Abbott and his cheer squad deny ''The Punch'' ever happened. But their case is flawed.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott addresses media questions about his time in university politics after visiting the Ainslie shopping centre in Canberra on Friday, 14 September. Photo: Andrew Meares
IN HIS new Quarterly Essay on Tony Abbott, ''Political Animal'', journalist David Marr records an alleged incident that took place at Sydney University in 1977. Abbott was at the time a campus operative of a party linked to B.A. Santamaria's conservative Catholic National Civic Council. He lost the election for Student Representative Council president to Barbara Ramjan. Ramjan told Marr that an infuriated Abbott ''came up to within an inch of my nose and punched the wall on either side of my head … It was done to intimidate.''
In his interview with Marr, Abbott said he had no memory of the incident. Last Friday, he went much further, telling Channel Nine's Karl Stefanovic that he was absolutely certain that the event ''never happened''.
Abbott has already been particularly staunchly defended by two senior journalists, Gerard Henderson and Greg Sheridan. Both were once associates of the National Civic Council. On Tuesday, Henderson argued in The Sydney Morning Herald that if Abbott had done what Ramjan claimed, it would certainly be a serious ''intimidatory gesture''. The trouble was that there was no reason to believe that the incident had occurred. Marr's story was based solely on ''an aggrieved person's'' 35-year-old false memory. There were, Henderson pronounced, ''no witnesses''.
On the same day, Sheridan, who was in 1977 Abbott's closest friend, described the Marr story as nothing but politically motivated slander. ''Marr is wrong,'' he wrote in The Australian. ''And this mistake reflects his overall sloppiness as a journalist, failure as a historian and distorting bias as a polemicist.'' Soon after, Sheridan described the essay and its reception as ''the most disgraceful, sectarian, anti-Catholic campaign'' he had ever seen.
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On Wednesday the case mounted by Abbott's defenders began to crumble. David Patch, a barrister and former judicial registrar of the Industrial Relations Court, published a refutation of Henderson in The Age. In 1977 he was Ramjan's campaign manager. Patch claimed that although he did not witness the incident reported by Marr, he did speak with Ramjan moments after it took place. ''She is a small woman … She was very shaken, scared and angry. She told me Abbott had come up to her, put his face in her face, and punched the wall on either side of her head.'' ....<cont>
Nothing can compare with what was actually done to Peter Slipper . Outrageous. (& yes I know he's not a saint, but ...), & nothing can compare to the way those disgusting attack dogs have treated Gillard .... )... Malcolm Turnbull by far the preferred leader over Abbott (by Liberal voters) in today's poll findings .... 
Labor resorting to chum bucket approach: Pyne
Updated 9 hours 8 minutes ago
Opposition Education spokesman Christopher Pyne tells ABC News Breakfast the latest Newspoll results have been driven by the "politics of personal denigration".
