News.com.au loves a good Abbott bashing and this time managed to find Monash University arts professor James Walter to join the party:

‘I guess he’d probably go into some sort of business role or some sort of consultancy position,” Prof Walter said.

It depends what he’s offered. People usually get picked up because of their connections.

Abbott is unlike Kevin Rudd because Rudd had international relations, foreign policy-type aspirations all along and some academic connections, so he could move into things related to the UN and he could move, for instance, to Harvard.

I don’t think Abbott has those types of links or academic credibility‘.

So according to the professor, a Rhodes Scholar with a law degree (Abbott) does not have ‘academic credibility’, while a Bachelor of Arts recipient who eats his earwax (Rudd) is chock full of the stuff. Is Harvard aware of this?

But wait! The good professor has more to say:

“I think it’s pretty unlikely that he might stay in politics for rest of this term because it’s not a long-term option unless he thinks he can make a comeback,” he said.

Now, it’s one thing to have your opinion made to look stupid after you have given it, but for that opinion to be utterly (and unintentionally) discredited within the same news story is quite an achievement (kudos to Malcolm Farr at news.com.au for his effort at proof reading this article before publishing it):

‘It’s been a tumultuous week and I now intend to spend some time with my family to think about the future,” Mr Abbott told news.com.au.

But my intention is to remain in the Parliament’.

Gee, I wonder how Abbott will be able to stick it out and rake in a politician’s salary for another year?

Well done professor. I’m glad there are educated people like you around giving us their expert opinion. Of course, with previous journal article titles such as “What if Whitlam had won another opportunity to implement his program?” and “Why prime ministers go too far: The case of John Howard”, coupled with the fact that you’re not ‘teaching’ at the moment, I’m not surprised you found the time to deliver this tripe.