Mystery portrait of Queen hung in Australian PM's Tony Abbott's office The department, which is the most powerful arm of the civil service but also tends to be discrete, if not secretive, is understood to have chosen to hang the portraits but has refused to say why. Some employees of the prime minister's department were reportedly none too pleased by the sudden appearance of the portrait in the staff briefing room. A portrait has also reportedly appeared in one of the suites of the department's senior executives. An unnamed civil servant told the Canberra Times: "Next they'll be making us curtsey when he comes into the building." Mr Abbott, a conservative and self-described "incorrigible Anglophile" , became the first prime minister since John Howard in 1996 to be sworn in with an oath to the Queen during a ceremony in Canberra two weeks ago. Former Labor leaders Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard instead pledged to serve the Commonwealth. Mr Abbott vocally campaigned against Australia becoming a republic during the referendum in 1999. He wrote in his political memoir that when he first returned to London as a student it "felt like more than a homecoming."