Pragmatic Abbott embraces mentor's philosophies

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LEADERSHIP is a voyage of self-discovery and Tony Abbott proves the maxim.

Elected nine months ago as populist agitator for the anti-climate change rebellious Right, Abbott now seeks high office as a restrained and genial pragmatist who offers not a new path but a restoration of order.

The Abbott transition is dramatic and necessary. It is easily explained: Abbott won the Liberal leadership over Malcolm Turnbull last year by breaking out to the Right and seizing command of the populist, grassroots Coalition revolt against Labor's carbon price.

Yet to defeat Julia Gillard he has been forced into a rapid march back towards the centre, trying to hold faith with his conservative base but reach out to win or neutralise constituencies wary of his muscular, old-fashioned and metaphysical attitude to politics.

This has required a new discipline. The cavalier boldness has surrendered to another Abbott character trait: pure ambition. It is the reoccurring pattern of Abbott's life. He left the seminary for the temporal world when, as he said, his love for Jesus succumbed to his love for politics. While trailing his coat Abbott, at each critical step, has made the transition demanded by practical politics.

The agenda Abbott advanced in Sunday's policy speech was a shock to many Tony believers and testifies to his sheer pragmatism in ambition. He has ditched his enshrined goal of more industrial relations reform. He is keeping Ken Henry as Treasury secretary and praises his ability. He wants a 12-month process to draft a tax reform agenda based on Henry's report. He offers an extravagant parental leave scheme for working women but still no new scheme for stay-at-home mothers.

The first foreign leader he will contact is not President Obama but the president of Nauru. The first nation this champion of the Anglosphere will visit is Indonesia. Abbott was once seen as a

big spender but his priority now is discharging the debt, not new grand plans. Long a critic of state governments, he shuns any centralisation agenda. And he offers no changes on divorce or abortion for his old friends.

All such positions, again, are easily understood -- they fit into an Abbott agenda for office, as distinct from book writing, media interviews, confessional ruminations, ideological posturing and rank self-indulgence, all activities at which Abbott has excelled.

According to Peter Costello the young Abbott saw himself as a Don Quixote figure, "ready to take on lost causes and fight for great principles", with a penchant for "grandiose plans for public expenditure". But Abbott's 2010 agenda is devoid of either romance or great principles.

His policy agenda for office is Liberal orthodox, geared to an era of fiscal restraint and bears the stamp of his absolute mentor, John Howard. In this election Abbott, for the first time, embraces the full Howard framework. Towards the end of his policy speech he was explicit: he will govern as an economic liberal backing smaller government, lower taxes and greater freedom; as a social conservative supporting families and values "which have stood the test of time"; and as an Australian patriot backing ideas "which don't trifle with our country's future".

This was Howard's strategy and note that it was successful. Economic liberalism, social conservatism and Australian nationalism are the ideas that defined Howard's era as described in my book The March of Patriots. Now they constitute Abbott's strategy.

This was not the case in the past. Despite their friendship, Howard and Abbott differed a lot, as did Costello and Abbott. Witness the long list of Abbott's frustrations: his failure to take over public hospitals, his inability to implement a radical welfare reform agenda, his post-2004 election repudiation on the Medicare safety net and Howard's restraint on Abbott's social crusading. Howard's affection for Abbott did not blind him to the younger man's political flaws.

But Howard would entirely approve Abbott's 2010 transition to maturity. Interviewed this week by The Australian, Abbott felt compelled to impose a philosophy on this transition. "Ultimately, you've got to be a pragmatist," he said. "It's got to be a pragmatism driven by values. To win an election and to govern successfully, you have to construct a majority. That means respecting a whole lot of people who might not instantly agree with you. The successful prime ministers, Hawke and Howard, being the two great modern examples, reached out beyond their core constituency -- Hawke reached out to business and Howard reached out, if you like, to conservative working class.

"You've got to do that. You've got to reach beyond your base camp if you're going to be an effective politician. It doesn't mean you're not still a stalwart in terms of your fundamental beliefs. But you've got to go beyond them."

Abbott concedes such a leader may risk being seen to ditch his convictions. "But I don't think anyone who knows me would accuse me of that," he said. Of course, Abbott himself has moved beyond Howard in some areas; witness paid parental leave and the green army dedicated to conservation.

The irony is that Abbott's pitch is similar to that of Malcolm Fraser in 1975: it is a call to restore order, discipline and tradition after a bad government. The difference is that Labor in 2010 cannot be compared with Whitlam Labor and Abbott's agenda is far more restrained than Fraser's. Abbott pledges an Action Agenda. It is a marketing tool to stress the ending of the mining tax, the Nauru processing centre, chairing his first National Security Committee meeting and creating a debt reduction taskforce.

Abbott is not offering a core change in Australia's direction, another surprise for many people given his past profile. On foreign policy, economic policy, immigration and many other areas including social policy most of the differences are not significant. Indeed, Abbott has avoided raising expectations outside his message of ending waste, paying back debt, stopping new taxes and stopping the boats. It is a mantra, of course, inconsistent with grand spending pledges.

The final irony is that Abbott, if he loses, may be seen as being too cautious and too constrained. That is why his pending statement on welfare reform is pivotal. This is a long-held Abbott conviction where his own beliefs have been verified, above all, by a man he most admires, Noel Pearson, who carries a special moral authority.

Abbott needs to show a touch more of his personal conviction and welfare reform would appeal to the Howard battlers in the western suburbs -- it will become a test of Liberal campaign strategy.