here he is - despite all the vague lefty phrases against him, rolling out his winning policies.
TONY Abbott has shifted gear, shifted focus and
started to put out solid policy alternatives in areas the Gillard government has been avoiding. In an explicit change of tempo and tone, the Opposition Leader has sought to
incorporate his carbon tax attack into a broader economic story while putting up policy proposals with which he is familiar and comfortable.
Given Abbott's ideas - even the example of
denying people on the dole their payments if they are in areas where ripe fruit falls for want of pickers - are refinements of his former "tough love" approaches, they represent not so much an emergence of a "'new Tony" as a re-emergence of the "old Tony".
It was in the early days of work for the dole that Abbott pushed his tough-love line and sided with those who argued against "sit down" money, which created welfare dependency.
As well, the Liberal leader is
revisiting Howard government plans that have been defeated or disassembled.
Abbott is pushing into the sphere of tax and welfare reforms with the aim of putting people outside the workforce into employment.
The strategy is designed to show he is capable of putting up positive policy ideas and goes to the heart of Julia Gillard's self-declared central aim of getting two million Australians into work.
What's more,
it's the area of tax and welfare reform where the government is being criticised for wimping out
.
The leaders, as if they have recognised the damage they have done to each other in recent weeks with their bitter personal brawling, have come out with tax/welfare initiatives and emphasised the need for better economic management and productive government spending.
Indeed, Abbott has decided to confront Labor's attacks on his record as a minister and reinforce his links - and those of his frontbench colleagues - with the Howard-Costello era of economic management, while implicitly distancing the Prime Minister and her colleagues from the Hawke-Keating reforms.
Abbott is not only shifting to a more positive approach but also spruiking the experience of his front bench and not demurring from the Howard years.
Depending on how serious is the resurrection of the Old Tony to take on the Real and Fake Julias, we may even see Coalition policies on long-term climate solutions and workplace reforms.