Prepare for Tony Abbott to be prime minister

Tony Abbott
Warren Mundine with Tony Abbott. Source: News Limited

BEFORE you read this about Tony Abbott - the good and the worrying - know I am biased.

It's a bias I share with former Labor president Warren Mundine about the Opposition Leader.

As Mundine told me: "If you don't like Tony Abbott, don't meet him, because when you do meet him he's a really good bloke."

In fact, Mundine likes Abbott so much that he quit Labor and on the weekend announced he'd head a council to advise a Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott on indigenous policy.

Mundine had better get ready, just as voters should prepare for the man now almost sure to lead them.

You see, it seems clear the Rudd Government is heading for a beating. The comeback is over.

It's taken just a month back as prime minister for Rudd to reveal himself again as all talk no action.

His threat to send all boat people to Papua New Guinea has failed to stop the boats, with one a day still arriving.

Rudd's promise to "terminate" the carbon tax was revealed as a fraud in the government's own Budget update, which projected the carbon price to actually rise to $38 by 2019.

Even Rudd's promise of more "positive" politics is contradicted by a campaign so negative that he's resorted to ludicrous deceits - like falsely claiming Abbott plans to put a GST on food and raise the price of a jar of Vegemite by 52 cents.

Result: a Nielsen poll on Saturday put Labor clearly behind: 48 per cent to 52. ReachTEL says 47 to 53.

Even more telling is polling suggesting Rudd will not win even one of the Coalition's marginal seats in Queensland.

That is astonishing. Rudd, a Queenslander and hailed as our most popular politician, was expected to pocket such home-state seats simply by returning to the leadership.

In fact, he had to. Labor must win at least five Queensland seats just to offset losses in NSW.

So in desperation Rudd last week asked a sworn enemy, former Queensland premier Peter Beattie, to replace Labor's candidate in Forde. As Rudd admitted, Labor was behind even there - a Queensland seat needing just a 1.6 per cent swing to fall to Labor.

So prepare for prime minister Tony Abbott and for your prejudices to be contradicted. That a former national Labor president now wants to work with Abbott destroys the craziest stereotype spread about this highly literate man - that he's a divisive bigot. Or, as Labor ministers have said, a "hack", "thug" and "bully".

Indeed, I remember fellow panellists on the ABC's Insiders mocking Abbott as Mr "People Skills" as in, he had none. Hur, hur, hur.

But Abbott's record as Opposition Leader puts the lie to that. He became leader by a single vote yet kept his party astonishingly united for four years, even turning Malcolm Turnbull from a rival into almost an ally.

What is true of Abbott's sensitive handling of his party will, I believe, be true of his handling of the country.

As I said when introducing Abbott at an Institute of Public Affairs dinner this year, whatever you think of his policies, he would never deliberately pit Australians against each other. He would not do what Julia Gillard infamously did - seek advantage by turning women against men, unions against bosses, poor against rich.

It's not just that he's more centrist than painted, having been asked years ago by Bob Hawke, a fine prime minister, to join Labor instead.

He is also a Catholic.

His enemies portray this as a negative, but wanting to bring people together and devoting himself to volunteer community work shows Abbott is actually a cultural Christian in the best sense.

That may also help explain characteristics which seemed at times a political weakness - deep introspection, a sense of unworthiness and a propensity to confess.

Think of the trouble he got into three years ago when he confessed a perfectly normal failure; a tendency to exaggerate in the heat of debate. Abbott, now scarred, is far more guarded these days - safer, if more boring.

So what sort of prime minister will this give us?

One who will try maybe too hard to please all.

One who will not be a radical, frustrating those of us demanding dramatic surgery to fix the Budget.

One who will honour his promises, which is why conservatives are desperate he promise more cuts and more workplace reform than he has yet dared.

One who already has conceded too much to the Left by promising to change the Constitution to recognise Aborigines - a new racism that will only divide us.

Abbott, in fact, is very different to what Labor says, which is why he may ultimately disappoint conservatives more than swinging voters.

One day we may all wish he promised more than the promises he kept. But we will have a leader of integrity.