OF COURSE Tony Windsor was one of those treacherous Independents who helped support the Greens-Gillard Reign of Terror during those awful years, until Rudd came back from the back-benches, knifing Gillard brutally in the back and seizing power in a vicious coup-d’état. A cowed populace was then given no choice, forced to turn to the evil Abbott himself as the only way to deliver them from an even greater evil. Tony lost his Tamworth seat in the ensuing electoral landslide. In utter disgrace for his role in sustaining the Gillard/Rudd years of pestilence, he retreated to the backwoods somewhere, and semi-retirement.

On the day of the election, Tony Windsor was a broken man. Almost ruined, he was a man who had not only lost his safe seat in Tamworth, but had also narrowly missed being strung up in the streets by a blood-thirsty lynch-mob intent on quick revenge.  (I completely denied that it was me who organised it.)

Today, as we watch the girls dancing delightfully and enticingly in front of Rupert and the rest of the Sky News team, Tony is truly remorseful. Acknowledging the wickedness of his recent past, he has since returned to the Conservative fold. Though we have both moved on from that dreadful time, Bernardi’s wacky conspiracy theory was a dreaded wake-up call, conjuring up to us both the horrific spectre of Rudd stalking the corridors of power once again.

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