Oz opposition leader Tony Abbott makes 'sex appeal' gaffe

 
Australian  politician Tony Abbott became a global laughing stock today after an attempted attack on his election rival, prime minister Kevin Rudd, backfired spectacularly
EPA
Frank Thorne13 August 2013

Australian politician Tony Abbott — already a laughing stock for comments he made about election rival Kevin Rudd — today described a young female parliamentary candidate as having “sex appeal” when asked to list her qualities.

The opposition leader made the remark about Fiona Scott, the local Liberal party candidate, when asked to describe the similarities between her and her predecessor, Jackie Kelly, in the New South Wales electorate of Lindsay.

He said: “They’re both good, young, feisty, I think I could probably say have a bit of sex appeal, and are just very connected to the local community.” Australian Labor MP Deb O’Neil said the comments showed Mr Abbott was “unfit to be prime minister”.

Mr Abbott’s latest gaffe comes just a day after he said Australian prime minister Mr Rudd was not “the suppository of all wisdom”. CNN, the Huffington Post and, inevitably, the internet all joined in after he said Mr Rudd was not “the suppository of all wisdom”. He meant repository, a storage place, rather than a drug delivery system that is inserted into the rectum.

Within minutes the hashtag #suppository was trending on Twitter, with photo-shopped images of theLiberal Party leader with captions such as “know your enema” and an image of Mr Abbott as Gollum from Lord of the Rings “squeezing out a policy”.

CNN described it as a “memorable slip of the tongue”, while The Huffington Post said: “He ... is battling a public perception that he is not prime minister material.”

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