Brush with immortality for ex-PM Abbott

“If you’ll forgive me, I have this vague hope of achieving some sort of political immortality.”

So said Tony Abbott at the unveiling of the ex-prime minister’s portrait by former newspaper cartoonist Johannes Leak at Parliament House in Canberra.

The painting joins parliament’s historic memorials collection, the country’s longest-running commissioning art program, and becomes a permanent fixture of what Leak described as “the…