Pell and Abbott to end up targets

By Jack Waterford
Updated April 18 2018 - 10:54pm, first published November 17 2012 - 3:00am

Julia Gillard's decision to go for a royal commission into institutional sex abuse of children may have involved a calculation that it had more capacity to hurt the other side of politics than her own. That might be summarised with the observations that Australia's most visible Catholic, George Cardinal Pell, is a close friend, mentor and counsellor of the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, and no one can remem-ber Pell wittingly doing Labor a favour - at least since 1955 - or missing an opportunity to benefit the Coalition.

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