Watching Tony Abbott throw rocks at his own government last week might remind Australians how he became Prime Minister almost four years ago.
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Mr Abbott has an instinct for the destructive and a bent for ideological fist fighting, something he likes to drape in the terminology of war, the theatre for his political 'battlelines'.
His imagination is drawn to the epic scale of civilisation-level struggle. According to one report in 2015, he would sit in his prime ministerial office and read Churchill, and ponder national security and ISIS.
The anecdote resonated because it spoke of a worrisome trait that explained some of his decisions: Tony Abbott was a bit, well, bizarre sometimes. His perception was one octave further out of tune with reality than even most politicians. It explained the knights and dames, the raw onion eating, the disjoint between how the government saw the world, and how the rest of Australia did for those three years Mr Abbott was Prime Minister. It ultimately made him an easy dispatch for Malcolm Turnbull, a Liberal who Australians saw as more contemporary in thinking.
Mr Abbott's oddness might go again to explaining some of the former prime minister's antics in the past week. Again, Australians have been treated to the cynical, tin-ear politics that marked his term. This time, it has imported and shamelessly adapted Trumpism ('Make Australia Work Again'). By proposing a cut to immigration, it's also tried playing to the tune of disaffected voters, the target of One Nation and other populist insurgents.
The fight is an easy one to pick for the former prime minister. He's got little to lose, and the Turnbull government's decision to try winning back the political centre and flex some populist muscle has opened it to attack on its right-wing credentials.
Hard-right conservatives have and should voice their concerns about their party's direction, as they look nervously at the growth of other parties on the right. The Liberals are in a tough position, reaching for the centre while appeasing their party's extremities.
But Mr Abbott's campaign smacks of self-interest and bitterness. Above all, it re-engages his knack for reckless destruction at a time the government - and Australia - needs stability. What he really hopes to achieve is unclear. By sniping at the sidelines, Mr Abbott only discredits the cause of others on the hard-right trying to sway their party's thinking. The conservative wing of the Liberals may despair at Christopher Pyne's boasting about a dominant moderate faction, but their best chance for political influence lies inside a stable Turnbull government, not in a caustic opposition like Mr Abbott's, unable to make reform when it came to governing.
The hard-right conservatives and voters Mr Abbott is appealing to should consider this when watching him throw rocks again. He might find then the war he's fighting is his own, imaginary one.
