This town ain't big enough for both Rudd and Abbott

The losing party will no doubt dump their leader in the aftermath of even a close result

THE federal poll later this year will be the one and only time Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott square off at an election. Predictions in politics can be dangerous, but this is an easy one.

If Abbott manages to perform well, and goes on exposing Rudd's tetchiness and penchant for over-promising, there is little chance the Prime Minister will stave off the ambitions of his deputy Julia Gillard for another three years in the election aftermath.

That would leave a showdown between the two Today show regulars Abbott (if he survived a further three years) and Gillard in 2013.

If Abbott's luck runs out and the government refines its attack on the new Opposition Leader, so much so that the next election is a disaster for the conservatives, Abbott won't last three more years to again face the voters. It would probably mean 2013 turns into a Sunrise election with Joe Hockey squaring off against Rudd (if Rudd doesn't move on anyway).

Either way 2010 will be the one and only showdown between Rudd and Abbott, the reason perhaps why both leaders are raising the stakes with their rhetoric and criticisms of each other.

Since Abbott assumed the opposition leadership he has condemned Labor's "great big new tax" (the emissions trading scheme), its failure to follow through on health reform, and he has taken to laying into ministers (in particular Peter Garrett) for what he regards as gross incompetence and potential corruption.

At the same time Rudd has painted the Coalition as a threat to national prosperity. The government, via Gillard's words, has suggested female voters are fearful of Abbott getting his hands on the levers of power. And Labor has accused the Opposition Leader of wanting to reintroduce Work Choices if he wins the election.

It is a high-stakes game not with positive messages about achievements and policy ambitions, but via threats of how bad the other side of politics really is.

Fear, our party leaders are banking on, trumps hope.

The frustrating aspect of this negative pre-election campaign is that the truth doesn't much come into it. Rudd's emissions trading scheme isn't a great big new tax; it is a cap-and-trade system with a price on carbon. Most of the revenue it generates is put back into people's pockets to reduce the burden of the new scheme (one of the reasons the Greens don't think it will deliver the environmental benefits needed).

While Rudd is yet to live up to his commitment to call for a referendum on a federal takeover of public hospitals, and the public may not want one after watching how his government has managed the installation of pink batts in roofs, the national hospital reform process has been in full swing for some time and the government has made it clear a major health announcement is not far off.

And while Environment Minister Garrett has been under enormous political pressure over the disastrous rollout of insulation already mentioned, to call for his head when insulation employers don't follow safety standards is imposing a level of ministerial responsibility not seen during the Howard government's time in power.

As for Labor's attacks on the Coalition, it is a bit rich to accuse the conservatives of being economic vandals when it was their economic stewardship that sent Australia into the global financial crisis with no government debt. That is the real reason Barnaby Joyce is wrong when he implies Australia may default on its sovereign debt.

Whatever issues a happily married father with three daughters whose senior political staff and parliamentary deputy are all women is supposed to have with the opposite sex, Abbott is on the record confirming if elected he will not purse personal convictions about sensitive issues such as the "abortion pill" RU486, which the majority of the public don't agree with him about.

And the claim Abbott wants to reintroduce Work Choices is just silly. For a start he doesn't want to write a political suicide note.

Second, Abbott's intention to reintroduce individual contracts, which Labor abolished, is a commitment to workplace flexibility not a return to Work Choices, which was only legislated in the final term of the Howard government after individual contracts had already been brought in by the Coalition in the late 1990s.

The public will have to get used to such distortions of the truth as the election draws nearer. Laws preventing misleading political advertising are clunky and slow to react, and increasingly politicians aren't called on the inaccuracies they spruik.

For a campaign centring on the persona of the two major party leaders, both men have surprisingly little real authority over their parliamentary teams.

Abbott is only the Liberal leader because Malcolm Turnbull wouldn't listen to his backbench regarding the ETS. Even though Abbott has had a good start, which has buoyed conservatives, many of those who voted for him only did so reluctantly. It was more that they were voting against Turnbull.

After the last election when Abbott canvassed for support before making a run for the leadership, he quickly found out few supported his ambitions. He pulled out of the race with single digit support.

Two years later he is Liberal leader, and the first one yet to eat into Rudd's popularity.

But Rudd has never been a popular figure inside the Labor Party. To win the leadership from Kim Beazley in late 2006 he relied on the left-wing block of votes Gillard delivered as part of their ticket.

Rudd's Newspoll preferred prime minister and satisfaction ratings have artificially lifted his authority inside the Labor Party for two years now, but recent declines in his personal ratings mean Labor MPs are already starting to wonder how soon after the next election the post-Rudd era might begin. That thinking will quickly pass if Rudd convincingly disposes of Abbott. His artificial authority would be reinstated.

But if the election is close (and Labor will surely win it even if it is) Rudd will be on borrowed time as his deputy looks to build on the successes she has had in quashing Work Choices and imposing initiatives such as the My Schools website.

Rudd's mistake was to let his Newspoll popularity go to his head. It has given him the confidence to, for example, not appear on the ABC's Insiders program since becoming Prime Minister.

But with his personal support starting to slump, decisions such as that have left him unpractised in tougher forms of interviews, and unpopular with presenters who act as the filter between him and the public. In contrast Gillard has always been willing and available.

Abbott's mistake has been to himself jump on the bandwagon that the Coalition could win the next election. It has left him in a position where failure to overhaul Rudd might be seen as absolute failure.

Having inherited a party in a state of civil war and facing an electoral wipe out, Abbott shouldn't have let the yardstick on his performance at the next election move so far.

As I said, it has become a high-stakes game.