Flip-flops leave Abbott open to attack

SINCE Kevin Rudd's slide in the polls, Tony Abbott has changed his election strategy in a way that will play into Labor's attacks that he isn't all he appears to be.

On March 9, the Opposition Leader told his partyroom a "Barry O'Farrell-style, small-target strategy" - the approach being used in NSW by an opposition cruising towards certain victory - wouldn't work for the federal opposition. It had to take risks and sell its credentials to govern.

Just three months later, Abbott has had a change of heart. He is now telling colleagues he doesn't want to "frighten the horses" by giving away too much of himself or his intentions for government.

It is a marked shift in style Labor will be quick to condemn.

Labor strategists have tried to tar Abbott with the Work Choices brush, suggesting that if he is elected he would embark on a secret agenda to return controversial aspects of the Howard government's industrial relations legislation into law. Abbott has denied the claims.

The attacks are part of a wider campaign by Labor to point out that, far from him being a straight-talker, Abbott has a record of flip-flopping on ideas and commitments and can't be trusted.

As Abbott himself admitted on the ABC's 7.30 Report, he doesn't always tell the gospel truth.

Abbott once said: "Opposition tends to be a permanent debating society because even the most final decisions can sometimes be revisited in office."

With commentary like that, no wonder he has decided he should move to a small-target strategy.

Despite being viewed as a conviction politician, suggestions from Labor that Abbott regularly changes his mind are not unfounded. In government, Abbott was a staunch opponent of paid parental leave, yet he now plans to introduce a generous scheme funded by big business.

As health minister, he argued for a federal takeover of public hospitals. He now claims even Rudd's more modest hospital reform plans aren't necessary.

Halfway through last year, Abbott said it wasn't the role of oppositions to protect the public from an elected government, yet by the end of the year he won the Liberal Party leadership by promising to block the government's emissions trading scheme in the Senate.

And when addressing voters in remote Victoria, Abbott said that climate change was "absolute crap", yet just a few months later he wrote in The Australian that "something has to be done about climate change".