John Oliver farewells Aussie PM: 'Ding, dong. Tony is dead'
Spare a thought for the unheralded victims of last week’s change of Prime Minister – the comedians.
US satirist, actor and comedian John Oliver, speaking outside of the Emmy Awards, has delivered his own eulogy to Tony Abbott’s brief but eventful stint as Australia’s leader in typically brutal style.
But it is likely the last time Oliver will get to reap the comedy cash crop that was the Abbott Government.
“Ding, dong. Tony is dead. Let me pour a little out, pour a little out for Tony Abbott,” Oliver said, ceremonially tipping a drop of his beer onto the ground as he spoke to an Australian reporter.
“I don’t know what the point of Tony Abbott was but it was fun while it lasted.”
“It was like taking heroin. It was incredibly exhilarating and it was right that you stopped.”
Asked if the United States’ current trajectory towards making the human out-take reel Donald Trump its president was similar to Australia’s grand Abbott-experiment, Oliver had to deliver some bad news.
“I don’t think they’re going to elect him, you did elect Tony Abbott,” he said.
The English-born Oliver who came to fame on John Stewart’s Daily Show before striking out on his own with his popular Last Week Tonight program is a close follower of Australian politics.
This is not his first time taking aim at Tony Abbott. He has previously regaled Americans with tales of the short-lived, disaster prone government. He was also in Melbourne for the Border Force fiasco which he dubbed “the Aussie Stasi”.
He has previously described the dumped leader as a human train wreck, and featured him in a segment which famously saw an Australian child dubbing him “Tony dumb dumb”.
Oliver’s recent tour of Australia gave rise to smaller viral hit when an audience member in Sydney recorded the comedian’s reaction when someone showed him a video of Mr Abbott’s legacy-defining onion eating stunts.
"He needs constant supervision that man," Oliver told the crowd.
