It'll take more than sound bites and spin to win back government

ABBOTT'S task will be to convince voters he is the right talent for the job. That is no small task.

NOT enough Liberals like to write books or even chapters for books. I found this out the hard way last year when I edited a collection of essays on the policy and philosophical directions the Liberal Party should consider taking following its federal election defeat in late 2007.

The cover of the book, Liberals and Power: The Road Ahead, included pictures of four of the most prominent Liberal MPs who agreed to contribute chapters: then leader Brendan Nelson, incumbent leader Malcolm Turnbull, deputy leader Julie Bishop and Tony Abbott.

I did not ask Peter Costello to contribute because he had announced his retirement and was committed to producing his memoir.

The book should have been a celebration of policy and philosophical ideas designed to help direct how the Liberal Party would fight its way out of the political wilderness in the coming years.

Melbourne University Press was good enough to agree to publish such a collection, understanding full well that while it was an important book it would never be a bestseller.

Unfortunately, three of the four photographed contributors didn't see the significance of the project, despite agreeing to write chapters. Nelson got one of his senior advisers to do his chapter, offering minor amendments once it had been drafted.

Turnbull ultimately decided he was too busy to contribute, presumably consumed with working out how he could take over Nelson's job. (The irony of him being too busy because he had designs on the leadership of a party he had been asked to write policy direction for, but didn't, should not be lost on anyone.)

Bishop not only left her chapter to be drafted by one of her staff but that staff member plagiarised large sections of it from someone else's work, a 10-year-old speech by a New Zealand businessman.

Luckily for the quality of the book there were other authors who offered valuable contributions, including less well known Liberal parliamentarians, some academics and others who one day may become politicians themselves on the conservative side of parliament.

Of the four high-profile parliamentary Liberals who contributed, only Abbott provided an original, self-drafted piece of writing. It was thoughtful and well put together, reflecting his Oxford pedigree.

That's why it isn't surprising that Abbott has now written his own book (extracted in The Weekend Australian Magazine today) on the direction he would like to see the Liberal Party take in the years ahead. Having read an advance copy of the manuscript, I have to confess to not agreeing with every idea he puts forward. (His assault on federalism is at the top of my list.) But at least he is prepared to make an argument.

One of the most frustrating things about modern politics is the unwillingness of oppositions to do anything more than speak in sound bites and curl up into a ball to register a small target.

The theory is that governments lose elections, oppositions don't win them. That is true, but only after an opposition has spent a long stint out of power. At the other end of the electoral cycle governments keep winning until an opposition can convince voters they deserve to be returned to power. That proof comes from policy boldness and manifesto thinking.

Abbott's book is a manifesto for how he would lead the Liberal Party. In it he has deliberately tried to quash the notion that he has written a job application for the Liberal leadership. This is true in the short term. But in the longer term Abbott hopes to present a case for why he has what it takes to lead a party in need of philosophical direction.

Abbott is a conservative, unashamedly so. His book spends a good deal of time outlining the case for conservative positioning of the Liberal Party. But he has done so by outlining how he doesn't believe his views are as extreme as they have been painted to be by the media. To me this attempt -- and it is done convincingly, and I say that as a media commentator who was critical of his positioning on issues such as the introduction of the so-called abortion pill RU486 -- represents an understanding by Abbott that while he may think his views correlate with those of the average Australian, he has a long way to go if he is to prove as much.

John Howard was in a similar position in the 1980s. By the time he became prime minister voters were convinced his extreme views on economic liberalism weren't actually so extreme. Abbott is hoping for a similar repositioning of his religious convictions. But his problem may be that time is not on his side. He is 51. If the Labor Party stays in government as long as the previous Labor government, he will be 64 by the time the Liberals return to power (and like Howard it may take Abbott that long to convince colleagues he is a suitable leader).

But in the brave new world of an ageing population (coupled with Rudd's new retirement age of 67) maybe Abbott can survive to one day lead the country.

Abbott's task will be to convince voters he is the right talent for the job. That is no small task.

DURING the week I wrote some articles alluding to the need for renewal inside the Liberal Party. They elicited more responses by Liberal MPs and party members than anything I have written previously.

While most responses encouraged me that what I was writing was important and needed to be said, I also was made aware of some errors in my logic. It is true that age is not the defining feature in who should stay and who should depart from the Liberal parliamentary line-up. But it is a key factor.

It is not good enough that of the 26 Coalition MPs aged over 60, 24 of them are on the back bench. This statistic says it all about why the Coalition vote is slipping among younger voters.

The young can accept old people in positions of authority, but when Coalition MPs are old and not on the front bench they are doing little more than taking up a space a future leader may occupy.

But there are exceptions. One of those is Bill Heffernan, and because of his age I may have unfairly targeted him as lacking the policy value he should offer as an ageing MP on the back bench. Judging by the number of defences of his valuable contribution in protecting the interests of regional NSW I received during the past couple of days, I may have been wrong to add him to the list of ageing MPs who should get out of the way for the next generation of Liberal MPs.

Heffernan is better known for his eccentric ways. But he also works hard for the bush, which is something not too many Liberals can claim credit for doing.

He spends at least 80 per cent of his time outside parliamentary sitting weeks travelling across regional NSW; the other 20 per cent of the time is spent in the city convincing people about the importance of regional New South Welshmen. If a younger equivalent of Heffernan can be found to replace him, I will be the first to advocate such a person moving into parliament to stand up for the bush in the Liberal partyroom. I can't think of one.