The issue for Abbott now is to do the in depth homework to position himself with a tactical and policy armoury to lead in to the actual campaign. He needs especially to understand how campaigns have been run in Queensland for the past 12 years. That will enable him to anticipate Rudd’s election strategy.

Abbott needs to appreciate that Rudd is a Queenslander and that his political thinking is influenced by this fact. Indeed, understanding the Queensland campaigning style will be the key to Abbott’s electoral success or failure.

Most commentators have concluded that governments normally get a second term unless there is a catastrophe. For most of Rudd’s first term, the catastrophe has looked like the Liberal Party. But Abbott has changed that. There is now hope in the party and genuine feeling that Abbott may even have a chance of victory.

The challenge for Abbott is to articulate clear policies that will lead the public debate. If Abbott doesn’t embrace the big-picture policies for Australia’s future then Rudd certainly will. Indeed, the Prime Minister’s bold health reform agenda is the first foray of Rudd’s campaign which, unless Abbott takes the front foot on this and on other issues, may leave him trailing in Rudd’s wake.

Four strategies could change the Australian political climate and push the federal campaign in favour of Abbott.

The first strategy is Abbott setting Australia’s policy agenda for education and welfare (as well as health) for the next 20 years. Such a clear vision would demonstrate for many that Abbott is ready to be prime minister and would undermine Rudd’s policy wonk reputation. The Prime Minister will not be able to restrain himself in wanting to run a policy campaign. That is the Queensland way.

Health, education, welfare and refugee policies are crucial for the positioning of the nation for the challenges of the 21st century.

As a former health minister, Abbott has a clear understanding of the long-term challenges and complex nature of health delivery. This means he can either counter or neutralise Rudd’s far-reaching health reforms. But more importantly, with skill and application, Abbott can promote his own long-term vision of education and welfare reform, plus a clearly thought-out position on refugees, immigration and population policy.

The second strategy is that Abbott must highlight and recommit to the Howard government’s sound economic management practices to guarantee Australia’s economic future.

Australians regard the Howard years as ones of sound economic management, and by next month’s federal budget Abbott needs to be seen increasingly as a sound economic manager.

The third strategy is to get the Liberal Party to learn how to campaign effectively in marginal seats to overcome the Labor Party’s campaigning dominance in these seats.

Mike Rann won in South Australia because the Labor Party out-campaigned the Liberals in the marginals.

It is clear the Liberal Party is no match on the ground to the state Labor machines in targeted campaigning. The Liberals need to spend the money necessary to get the right people to target the swinging voters or this could be the difference between winning and losing in the key marginal federal seats. Just ask the SA Liberals.

The fourth strategy is to minimise the Queensland style in Rudd’s campaigning methods.

Only three Australian political leaders have won four elections in recent Australian political history: Bob Hawke, John Howard and Peter Beattie.

Hawke and Beattie had a similar populist campaigning style. Howard was more restrained but could mix it with the best of them when he needed to. Hawke was the federal ALP’s best campaigner in Queensland. Queenslanders loved him and the results showed. They did not have the same affection for Paul Keating.

But the Queensland style is something special. Rudd had to watch Beattie keep winning large majorities in Queensland for almost 10 years as “Honest Pete” rolled out the sincerity and personal stories and destroyed his political enemies with what seemed to be genuine apologies.

As a long-serving premier, Beattie gave the impression of just being a good guy, but underneath this public facade was a very clever political strategist who, like Joh Bjelke-Petersen, was underestimated repeatedly by his opponents and media commentators alike.

Rudd may deny it furiously, but he is using the same Beattie tactics, ranging from holding community cabinet meetings across the country to allowing his Nambour family history to be used to make a point at every opportunity.

Rudd has already resorted to the public apology and acceptance of responsibility approach. So far at least, many Australians seem to like it.

Rudd uses the Brisbane Broncos football team and sporting events as a campaigning tool. So did Beattie and Hawke.

But Rudd is not as good a campaigner as were these seasoned hands. The Prime Minister often looks wooden with people, is prone to get cranky with staff and frequently appears to use words and phrases that do not connect with ordinary Australians.

The key for Abbott is to put Rudd under pressure by using his own direct style forcefully and never letting Rudd dominate the policy agenda.

Queenslanders with inside knowledge know Rudd is not good under constant political pressure and becomes quite unpleasant. Hawke and Beattie loved campaigning. Deep down, Rudd doesn’t like other people. In fact, the only people who really like and respect the Prime Minister seem to be those who do not know him.

Rudd faces the handicap of the unpopular state Labor governments in Queensland and NSW. The truth is the Bligh government has lost its way so badly that it is hardly recognisable as having any link to the Beattie years and Premier Anna Bligh is in a terminal political position with her party facing many years in the political wilderness. The same also applies to state Labor in NSW.

Abbott’s way to beat the Queensland style is to engage people at every opportunity as Hawke and Beattie did: in shopping centres, malls and public meetings. If Abbott shows himself as a genuine man of the people who presents real policy alternatives, especially in education, welfare and health, and who at the same time is seen as a sound economic manager, he will overcome the Rudd’s Queensland style.

Then in coming months, we will have a real contest federally, which Abbott may yet win.

The Weekend Australian, April 24-25, 2010

Fogg and his valet, Passepartout, set off from London on an improbable adventure overcoming all manner of obstacles to arrive back home with just minutes to spare to collect on the bet.

As Abbott and Julie Bishop notch up their first 80 days as the new Opposition leadership team, the odds that they can pull off an election win are shortening. As unlikely as it seemed only two months ago, they may get there in time.

Abbott and Bishop know this is their chance to make history. They have at best a few months to convince the public that the Rudd Government has not earned a second term.

Since Abbott assumed the leadership from Malcolm Turnbull last December, the Opposition Leader and his deputy have criss-crossed the country to reinvigorate the Liberal Party base and sell the Coalition message.

Verne described Fogg’s demeanour as “repose in action”. The same could be said of the Coalition leadership. Both Abbott and Bishop are fit and focused on the task. When Parliament rose after two promising weeks for the Opposition, Abbott flew to Darwin to talk about the Government’s broken promise on border protection and Bishop flew to Eyre Peninsula to discuss the Government’s broken promise that no worker would be worse off under its new workplace laws.

They joined forces in Perth to fund-raise from a mining and resource sector that is becoming disgruntled with the union militancy and industrial action flourishing under Julia Gillard’s new workplace laws.

Abbott and Bishop are keen to maintain the momentum that is evident from polls showing voter dissatisfaction with Labor, particularly in Western Australia and Queensland where they can pick up several seats in this year’s federal election, as well as NSW.

Abbott is not afraid to challenge Labor orthodoxy. Having been warned that the Coalition would be wiped out in any election where climate change was an issue, Abbott rightly dismissed Rudd’s complex, costly and unwieldy emissions trading scheme as a “great big new tax”.

There are parallels with Rudd’s climate-change policy and the Howard Government’s WorkChoices.

Rudd came to the Opposition leadership in late 2006 with the Howard Government struggling to explain its complex WorkChoices laws.

Abbott came to the Opposition leadership with the Rudd Government struggling to explain its complex climate-change policy. When Abbott released his easy to understand direct-action climate-change policy, Rudd defaulted to supercilious modesty, gently chiding himself for not communicating more effectively on how his cap and trade scheme would work.

Predictably the unions are gearing up for another Rights At Work campaign against the Coalition.

There is no doubt the Howard government failed in countering the last campaign during the election.

However, this time the public will be wondering why the unions have been silent on reports of students losing after-school jobs due to the inflexibility of Julia Gillard’s new awards.

Gillard has had little to say about the recent strikes in WA and the reminder of the bad old days of industrial disputation in the Pilbara that damaged our productivity levels and trade reputation.

With an effective Coalition assault on the Government’s record of broken election promises in health and education and Peter Garrett’s badly misplaced priorities in the roll out of his home insulation program, the Government is clearly rattled.

The Government is working overtime to label Abbott as an arch-conservative whose views on social issues will alienate women. Current polling indicates the Government has overestimated anti-Abbott sentiment among female voters.

Despite winning the leadership contest by a single vote, with Bishop’s help Abbott has united the Coalition party room behind him. Abbott has the advantage of hitting the ground running without having to look over his shoulder.

Deputy Bishop has been an effective conduit with the backbench. She took the time to canvass all Coalition members and senators about their views on the Government’s climate-change policy. Turnbull ignored their views. Abbott heeded them.

The Coalition has passed through the fire of three leadership battles and is now becoming hardened for the election contest. There are still challenges ahead.

The choice of Barnaby Joyce as Opposition finance spokesman is a test for Abbott. Joyce has put debt firmly on the national agenda and if he can get his lines right he will be a formidable asset particularly in rural WA and Queensland where he is well placed to challenge Rudd and Swan on budget management.

Abbott should use the next 80 days to put out more policy ideas before the Government’s election budget is delivered. His first 80 days have taken many by surprise.

The Daily Telegraph February 23, 2010

Too often much of Australia’s daily media coverage is Canberra-centric and political mood changes in states such as Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania are not likely to be detected in Canberra until a Newspoll or election result has highlighted them.

The reality is the new federal Opposition Leader’s direct, knockabout, open style will be well received in these states.

He will be aided in WA by his deputy Julie Bishop and a popular Liberal Premier, Colin Barnett, and in Queensland by an unpopular Labor Premier, Anna Bligh, who is facing a revolt within her own party.

Abbott clearly understands this, which is why one of his earliest regional visits took him to Queensland.

Queenslanders like their leaders to be strong, open characters who directly engage the electorate. The many electoral successes of strong personalities such as premiers Joh Bjelke-Petersen and Peter Beattie should be a key indicator to the Liberal campaign team of Abbott’s potential vote-winning power.

Beattie and Bjelke-Petersen were the most successful campaigners their parties fielded. Both produced landslide victories never seen before by their parties and unlikely to be seen again for some time.

Both are loved or hated depending on political bent.

This is the Abbott style. He will be at home in Queensland.

The battle on the election hustings in Queensland and WA between Kevin Rudd and Abbott will be the highlight of next year’s campaign. Queensland also offers Abbott an unexpected opportunity in Rudd’s home state on the issue of economic management. Economic credentials are always a key electoral issue.

In Queensland, the economic track record of the Bligh government is in tatters and will worsen as the federal poll approaches and the government’s privatisation plans are rolled out.

This will be used by Abbott to undermine the Labor brand and it will strike a strong chord in Queensland.

Under Bligh, Queensland has lost its AAA credit rating and the state budget will not be in surplus until 2015-16.

Both these things were unheard of in the Bjelke-Petersen or Beattie years.

Queenslanders are used to seeing their state as Australia’s economic leader and, with WA, the engine room of the nation. They don’t like Bligh using asset sales to fix the budget bottom line.

Queenslanders also believe the float of Queensland Railways is bad policy and not in the state’s interests. It will soon become apparent that the sale is being handled poorly. Based on history, the float will attract at least a 20 per cent reduction in value for QR compared with a trade sale.

The key question will be: if the state government is so determined to go through with this unpopular decision to sell the assets, why wouldn’t it seek to get the greatest financial returns?

With the state in financial difficulty for the first time anyone can remember, the float is the wrong option. The Bligh government will win no favours by going ahead with it.

Some shares bought by Queenslanders will soon be sold and Queenslanders believe they are being offered an opportunity to buy shares in an entity they already own anyway.

But that is not the only problem that Abbott will be able to exploit .

Eventually the trade unions opposed to the sale will ask why the government is selling both the coal freight business and the rail track now that the Australian economy is improving.

If only the coal freight business were sold and the track kept in public hands, there would be more competition in rail and hence more economic growth in Queensland.

As the global financial crisis recedes it will become harder for the Bligh government to argue it is selling QR only because of the world’s poor economic conditions.

There is also a big problem in packaging the track and the coal freight business in the one float. In effect, this is selling a monopoly. This must impair Queensland’s long-term regional development and in particular the mining and resources industry.

It is to be hoped the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will intervene and not allow this uncompetitive structure.

The big winners from the assets sales will be the bankers, who will do very well from their fees for the transaction.

The Queensland government is handling the sale ineptly and no one should underestimate Abbott’s willingness to take the gloves off to Bligh and her team and do some long-term damage to the Prime Minister and federal Labor’s economic credentials at the same time.

Rudd strongly supported Bligh to become the ALP national president for the 2010 federal election year, a decision he may live to regret. It will be very difficult to hide the unpopular Queensland Premier in this key battle state.

To make matters worse, the unions are agitating for a special ALP conference early in the new year to overturn the assets sale decision and there is speculation that there may be a leadership challenge to Bligh from parliamentary Speaker John Mickel.

The question for Rudd is whether he abandons his close friend Bligh and her unpopular government or tries to defend her performance and in consequence takes the political hit that will surely come with it.

Rudd saw the Goss government, in which he was a key player, lose office in Queensland so he knows how strongly Queensland can swing.

Bligh’s government is closer in style and decision making to the government of Wayne Goss than to that of Beattie.

So the warning signs are not good for Rudd in Queensland.

This is a fight Abbott will enjoy.

The Weekend Australian December 19-20, 2009

But the first decisions by Abbott with respect to his personnel are more multi-layered than that.

In a much-needed move, Malcolm Turnbull, who in recent days has behaved like a petulant narcissist, has been replaced by the much more formidable Abbott.

But otherwise the opposition’s key leadership group remains the same: Joe Hockey as shadow treasurer, Christopher Pyne as education spokesman and leader of the house, Julie Bishop as spokeswoman on foreign affairs and Nick Minchin and Eric Abetz as leader and deputy leader of the Liberal Party in the Senate.

The important addition to this group is Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce as finance spokesman. It remains to be seen whether Joyce can work as part of a team. Either he will do so and, in the process, move from a maverick to a mainstream player or else prove incapable of being anything other than a public-oriented attention-seeker.

This team of seven will need to work closely together and to be united. If this happens, they may have a close to even money chance of beating the Rudd Labor government. But, to do so, they will need to bury historical animosities and they don’t have much time in which to achieve this.

Members of the federal opposition have spent most of the past two years fighting among themselves. This has let a not very accomplished Labor government off the hook in many areas.

But in the two periods when the Coalition focused on Labor, between May and July last year and May and July this year, it pegged back Labor’s lead. These periods were between the announcement of poor federal budgets and the middle of the year.

In the first period, the Coalition promised to cut taxes on fuel. It caused surprise by winning the Gippsland by-election with a 6 per cent swing.

In the second, it made government debt and the expanding budget deficit potent issues.

However, in July last year it went back to warring between the Turnbull and Brendan Nelson forces and in July this year it was saddled with the terrible Godwin Grech fake emails affair, from which Turnbull never recovered.

Thanks to Abbott clearly opposing the Rudd emissions trading scheme, the Coalition is taking the fight to the ALP. Hence the next election looks set to be a contest. Abbott may well have found an issue that affects the hip-pocket nerve of the Australian voter. He certainly is going to make Kevin Rudd explain Labor’s ETS, and the more the public delves into it the less it may like it.

This will be especially so if Abbott can create, and sell, a climate change action policy that achieves reductions in greenhouse gas emissions without the extensive money churn and waste, and the significant increase in unemployment, that he argues will result from Labor’s policy.

Apart from Bishop, the other members of the opposition seven (Abbott, Hockey, Pyne, Minchin, Abetz and Joyce) are politically savvy and strong media performers. They are all politicians who love a scrap with Labor and whom you would want on your side in a fight.

Labor will not underestimate them even if some, especially in the Fairfax media, are underestimating Abbott.

Ironically, while Abbott will enjoy the enthusiastic support of Minchin and Abetz, he may need Hockey and Pyne more. They have credibility with the people Abbott may sometimes seem to alienate: the urban voters, many of whom switched their vote to Labor at the 2007 election.

But with interest rates rising, the budget in deficit and the government in debt, those voters may well be looking to move back to the Liberal Party at the next federal election.

Hockey has what is being called the Sunrise factor, a reference to his positive and avuncular persona, developed through regular appearances on the Seven Network’s morning television show. He translates this into a media style that is friendly and believable. However, rather like Labor’s Kim Beazley before him, he has to overcome a reputation of being somewhat lazy (hence the nickname Sloppy Joe).

Pyne has ruthlessly pursued Julia Gillard’s so-called education revolution, exposing mismanagement and waste that has dented her previously Teflon-coated reputation, and has aggressively taken the fight to a dominant government during parliamentary question time. Gillard initially tried to dismiss him as a poodle, but by the end of the year Pyne was operating more like an attackdog.

Even though she sometimes performed poorly under Nelson and Turnbull, with a more focused Abbott as her leader Bishop could well play an important role in Western Australia and more generally among women.

Coupled with a somewhat forbidding media style, Abetz knows how to deliver a cut-through line. Who could forget “Kevin 747″ as a play on Kevin07? Abetz will be required to take a message to small business on unfair dismissal laws and to business generally on what he perceives as growing union influence.

Minchin has emerged from this latest Liberal Party leadership change with enhanced power. He needs to ensure his leader has the unity that will be vital for limiting damaging distractions between now and election day.

As a former South Australian state director of the Liberal Party and machine man, Minchin needs to ensure Abbott has the necessary campaign funds and professional organisation behind him to effectively communicate the opposition’s message to the public, particularly to those who may change their vote.

If he works inside the tent, Joyce could be pivotal in winning back seats in rural and regional Australia. There are many to be won. If he stays on song, he has the capacity to resonate well with the Liberals’ and Nationals’ 750,000-strong small business base.

With the possibility of an election at any time from March to November, it is the job of the rest of the shadow ministry to constructively support this team.

Abbott intends to draw on the vote-pulling power among senior Australians of Bronwyn Bishop as the new opposition spokeswoman on seniors.

He will certainly use the knowledge of climate action, environment and heritage spokesman Greg Hunt and parliamentary secretary for climate action and the Murray-Darling Basin Simon Birmingham to craft a saleable climate change action policy.

Labor’s failure to deliver in reforming Australia’s underperforming and overloaded public hospitals will continue to be highlighted by opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton.

Abbott will hope new small business spokesman Bruce Billson will connect with the Coalition’s small-business base and that Scott Morrison as immigration spokesman will make clearer the distinction between Labor and the Coalition in the area of border protection and the handling of the burgeoning asylum-seeker arrivals in Australia. There will also be a role for the shadow attorney-general, George Brandis, who will handle the push by some Laborites for a charter of human rights. The Coalition will firmly oppose such a measure, hence delivering to Brandis an important part of the opposition’s strategy of rebuilding its base.

But there are others in the first Abbott line-up that are simply making up the numbers: Tony Smith in communications and Kevin Andrews in families, housing and human services, Warren Truss in transport and David Johnston in defence are all examples.

Now is not the time for the opposition to try to fight on many fronts. From what Abbott has done with his front bench, he seems to think so, too.

Waste, mismanagement, the economy, border protection, debt, deficit, union power: these are the issues that cause voters to support the Coalition parties and in the main Abbott has crafted a team to maximise his message and minimise errors in these areas.

When I reviewed Abbott’s book Battlelines in August, I compared his lively personal and political manifesto with Rudd’s recent essays, describing the latter as “duller than dishwater”.

In my concluding paragraph I argued that it was “still far from impossible that the member for Warringah will end up as leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party”.

Now that this has ensued, in an electoral contest with Rudd, the battlelines will be well and truly drawn.

For all of Labor’s bluster, the Prime Minister and his party know that with Abbott at the opposition helm, they well and truly have a fight on their hands.

Yet, apart from a deep commitment to key conservative values, to those who don’t know him personally Battlelines demonstrates an appealing vulnerability in Abbott that is often absent from his media and parliamentary “attack dog” persona. The book also reveals in harrowing detail the ‘toxic side of politics’, in particular the devastating impact of his private life made public upon the members of his immediate family and on his first true love, with whom Abbott thought (wrongly as it transpired) he had fathered a child.

Intellectually, the heart of the book examines the state of our federation. It is hard to disagree with Abbott’s contention that there are few problems, including that of education, health, and water security, that a dysfunctional federation doesn’t make worse. The facts are that state governments often have “legal responsibility for issues that only the national government has the political authority and financial muscle to resolve.”  Currently, the only effective way to significantly improve our schools and public hospitals and to better allocate water, especially on the Murray/Darling, is “for the Commonwealth to bribe the states.” Yet all too often the states take the money, but fail to deliver a desired outcome.  The only credible way to ‘fix the federation’, Abbott argues, is to “give the Commonwealth legal authority commensurate with its political responsibility.”  In Chapter 6, “Making the States Do Better”, he maps out how best to ensure that major political problems are subject to “clear lines of responsibility and accountability” and how best to avoid the ‘blame game’ of constant buck passing between states and the Commonwealth.

When analysising what may best be described as the key concept of political economy, Abbott admires some of conservatisms most historic and seminal thinkers. This is especially the case with Adam Smith, Edmund Burke and more recently, Michael Oakeshott, who is perhaps his foremost modernist philosophic influence. Indeed it was Oakeshott who articulated a position close to Abbott’s heart and intellect: that conservatism is as much a state of mind as a developed political philosophy. It is, he argues, a way of life. In one of the books key chapters, “What’s Right”, Abbott puts it thus: “Conservatism prefers facts to theory; practical demonstration to metaphysical abstraction; what works to what’s in the mind’s eye. To a conservative, intuition is as important as reasoning; instinct as important as intellect.”

Inevitably there are weaknesses in the book. Abbott is far too close and too kind to that spectacular Liberal Party failure, John Hewson, and is uniformly uncritical of the horrendous economic and foreign policy legacy of George W. Bush. Stylistically, he repeats ad nauseum one of my pet hates – the annoying phrase ‘Of course’- which the editors of Battlelines should have expunged in their entirety.

Yet these are relatively minor quibbles about a book which is frequently fascinating, and amusing too. Thus it’s useful to be reminded that often the best way to be reported in this country is to write the report yourself!

One doesn’t have to be a supporter of the coalition to believe that it’s very much for the good that there are senior shadow ministers who “might be thought of as keepers of the conservative conscience.” At a time when pragmatism and political spin relentlessly rule the roost, Australian public life is better off for having a longstanding parliamentarian of the ilk of Tony Abbott who actually believes in, and actively promulgates, a set of key moral values, and who clearly regards politics as a vocation. Ultimately, politics is as much about values as policies; articulated or not, values fundamentally affect policies.

One of Abbott’s key characteristics is an often disarming frankness.  Unlike so many 21st century politicians, almost always we know where we stand with him. And as befits an ex journalist for The Bulletin and a leader writer for The Australian, he knows how to work with words.

Perhaps this is why Abbott’s lively political and personal manifesto compares favourably with Kevin Rudd’s recent essays, which have been duller than dishwater. Dull Abbott isn’t. And it’s still far from impossible that the member for Warrighah will end up as leader of the parliamentary Liberal party. If that ensued, then, in an electoral fight with Rudd, the battlelines would be well and truly drawn – on one side anyway.

Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University and Professorial Fellow at the Australian Catholic University, Ross Fitzgerald is the author of 31 books, including ‘The Pope’s Battalions: B.A. Santamaria and the Labor Split’.  He is currently writing, Under the Influence, a history of alcohol in Australia.