That Tony Abbott was going to spend his first week as Prime Minister on country in East Arnhem land is one of the great "claims" that endures fro the election campaign.
His actual Garma Festival Speech did not say this. At about 20:27 in the YouTube clip of the speech he says he will as PM spend one week a year on country, and the context of the subsequent statement is clear that this reference to "first week" was not "first week as PM" but "first of my annual weeks."
In researching this I found this article which talks about the extent to which the promise was originally reported. It is astonishing the extent to which the story was allowed to run given how clearly it can be constructed that Mr Abbott did not mean his first week.
This isn't a failure of Mr Abbott it is a failure of those around him.
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