Lenore Taylor, political editor

The Guardian, Sunday 8 September 2013

Tony Abbott's ascension to the office of prime minister at times seemed unlikely – even to his colleagues – but Labor dysfunction and a relentless campaign focus restacked the odds

The first time I asked Tony Abbott about his leadership ambitions, we were in a six-seater plane above the Uluru-red canvas of the Central desert and his chances seemed so unlikely, even to him, that he almost didn't dare answer the question.

It was 2004, and as former prime minister John Howard's health minister, he was en route to a remote Aboriginal community and beginning to think deeply about the complex policy issues of indigenous disadvantage. But as a politician he was already something of a caricature: widely viewed as a head-kicker, ill-disciplined, too religious, too aggressive, a zealot.

"There's a certain mania about Abbott," one Liberal MP told me at the time, of the former Rhodes scholar, seminarian, cement plant manager, journalist and political adviser. "It can be a bit unnerving ... he's not called the Mad Monk for nothing."

Abbott's reticence revealed he was aware of his colleagues' misgivings, but after sliding around his answer for several minutes he finally admitted that he did fantasise about leading the Liberal party.

"But people have lots of fantasies about lots of things," he added quickly, laughing his raucous laugh in a self-deprecating kind of way. "I would fantasise a lot more about getting out of politics and becoming a full-time member of the Davidson Rural Fire Service [near his Sydney home] than I do about some further promotion ... You just never know what the future holds but, as far as I am concerned, there has always been this very clear pecking order: Howard first, Costello second, and then a whole group of people including Alexander Downer, Brendan Nelson … as well as people like myself."

Turns out the future held defeat for Howard, resignation for Costello and Downer and only a brief stint as opposition leader for Nelson.

But even in 2009, when the Coalition was in revolt against Nelson's successor, Malcolm Turnbull, over his support for Labor's emissions trading scheme, Abbott was not seen as the logical choice, and shocked his party, and himself, when he won the leadership ballot by a single vote.

Aware of the precariousness of life as an opposition leader, he chose relentless attack as a deliberate tactic to keep his party's opinion poll ratings competitive enough that he kept his job. It was a strategy that took the Coalition within a whisker of winning the 2010 poll, and therefore cemented his hold on the leadership, but it was also a tactic that reinforced voter misgivings about his personal traits, particularly his aggression.

Among colleagues, the first doubt Abbott overcame was his reputation for ill-discipline. He was less often caught out by off-the-cuff comments and loose language (although there was still the odd unguarded remark about housewives of Australia doing the ironing, and feeling a bit threatened by homosexuality) and even his internal critics had deep respect for the unstinting energy he brought to an exhausting permanent campaigning schedule beginning each day with his gruelling pre-dawn exercise regime.

Tony Abbott on an early morning training ride near Parliament House, Canberra. Photograph: Andrew Taylor/AAP

But they still weren't sure. The economic "dries" (as opposed to the more moderate faction of "wets") in the Liberal party, for example, hated the enormously expensive paid parental leave plan he forced upon them as a "captain's pick" in a bid to reboot his image with women voters, some of whom remained wary at the outspoken stance he took in 2004 against the number of abortions in Australia and his bid as health minister to retain final say over the importation of the abortion drug RU486, even though he now said he believed abortion should be "safe, legal and rare".

The traditional Liberals worried that so many of their articles of policy faith - lower taxation, non-restrictive competition laws, an open foreign investment policy, minimal manufacturing industry assistance - were being shunted to post-election "reviews". These traditionalists weren't exactly sure where their leader stood on the economic spectrum between their own free market ideals and the very different interventionist tendencies of people like his good mate from the National party Barnaby Joyce, who had helped convince Abbott to run for the leadership in the first place.

And there was always the niggling concerns in Liberal circles about Abbott's anti-communist and socially conservative political antecedents, explained by the Coalition leader himself during the election campaign in this way.

"My first political mentor was a fellow called BA Santamaria who many of you in Melbourne would still remember and BA Santamaria was a friend of the workers, he wasn't an enemy of the workers. He was basically a Labor man, he certainly wasn't a Liberal and to the end of his life Santa was still a little bit suspicious of the Liberal party. I was a union member myself when I was a journalist. I think that there are lots of good unions and good unionists I just don't like the crooked ones."

For their part, the Nationals remain deeply concerned that the parental leave plan leaves so many rural mothers who work in the home disadvantaged and that they have no idea how the Coalition will handle "red hot" foreign investment proposals like the still-pending takeover bid for Australia's largest grain-handling business by a US firm.

But the tantalising prospect of victory, as Labor continued to tear itself apart, meant they all – for the most part – kept their misapprehensions to themselves.

The public, however, took longer to convince. By late 2012, almost 60% of the electorate said they disapproved of the way Abbott was doing his job as opposition leader.

The minority parliament provided Abbott with more ammunition and unleashed even greater fervour. The Coalition believed the minority government could come tumbling down at any moment, that Gillard's power was illegitimate and that the deal with the Greens and the independents was somehow improper, even though Abbott had also courted them in the post-election negotiations.

Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce and Tony Abbott in 2011. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Labor struggled to claim credit for an economy that was strong by international standards in the face of Abbott's constant declarations of a "budget emergency". This was not helped by the budget remaining in deficit beyond the year Labor had ill-advisedly set for a return to surplus (which Labor had nominated because it was afraid of precisely such a Coalition campaign).

But then, when his costings were finally unveiled in the dying hours of campaign, it turns out he will return the budget to surplus no quicker than Labor was planning.

He insisted the emissions trading scheme, beginning with a fixed price that he dubbed a "toxic" tax, would wreck the economy and cause unimaginable pain, when in fact it caused a one-off rise in the cost of living of 0.4%. Meanwhile, he presented his own "direct action" emissions reduction scheme as virtually pain-free, brushing off independent modelling suggesting the amount of money on offer was insufficient to meet Australia's international emissions reductions goals.

Slowly but surely, through sheer perseverance and Labor's own ineptitude and internal division, Abbott began dictating the terms of almost every part of the national political debate.

Abbott's personal journey, from the man who hardly dared speak his ambition to Australia's 28th prime minister, is partly a story of a driven, intensely competitive leader who kept his eye on his goal and just kept running, and partly a story of leader who ran so hard at his opponents that they pretty much fell over. By June 2013, Labor was so desperate and demoralised that it changed leader again and reinstalled former prime minister, Kevin Rudd, who Gillard had deposed in June 2010.

Abbott's stride and pace did not falter. He continued his election year plan of switching the rhetoric to positive but keeping most of his policies under wraps.

As the former prime minister Paul Keating once said: "when you change the government, you change the country."

But because in the end they made a choice largely based on getting rid of Labor and re-setting the volume of Australian political discourse to something closer to normal, voters actually still haven't got a detailed idea of what change they may have chosen.

Times past: Abbott famously turned up late and swore at his opponent, Nicola Roxon, in a 2007 debate over health policy, raising questions about his campaign discipline. Photograph: Mark Graham/AAP

Abbott entered the campaign claiming a "unity ticket" with Labor on schools funding, but did not commit to the fifth and sixth years of promised spending increases, nor the whole point and aim of the "Gonski" report which was about bringing every struggling school up to a national standard. And in the fine print of his policy were changes that could in the long-term make a big cultural difference to how and what children are taught – the aim of moving one quarter of public schools to be "independent" public schools within three years, for example, and the intention of creating less "politically correct" national curriculum.

Abbott also deliberately downplayed health as a point of policy difference. Labor's Medicare Locals were no longer going to be abolished, but rather reviewed and an extremely expensive intention to remove the means test on the private health insurance rebate is now an aspiration to be achieved within a decade.

Abbott learnt long ago to stop talking about "job snobs" but he still firmly believes that the unemployed should engage in voluntary work if they can't find paid employment and that they should be encouraged to move to find work, and he's deeply committed to his "green army" of work for the dole conscripts planting trees and cleaning up waterways.

And his determination to take personal responsibility for indigenous affairs reveals a deep commitment to make a substantive difference in that area. He could well be the prime minister who leads Australia to an historic recognition of its original inhabitants in the constitution.

But in the end, Abbott was elected not so much in a groundswell of enthusiasm for his policies and ideas but a in a national wave of exhaustion with political conflict and Labor's internal divisions.

He has tempered what some once saw as zealotry. As he said on the ABC TV's Kitchen Cabinet program last week: "The difference between me today and the person I was 30 odd years ago is that I am much more conscious of the shades of grey, I am much more conscious of the complexity of the human condition now than I was then but I think my underlying values are very similar." But those who always hated his social conservatism still see plenty of reasons to paint him as sexist, rightwing bogeyman.

He has given every clue that he wants to follow John Howard's recipe for government longevity – gradual change, taking voters with him, making good his promise of a return to political stability. After the upheavals of the past three years, it would be no bad thing from the Coalition's point of view if the next three felt just a bit boring.

Abbott's only concrete promises for the budget bottom line are 10 years hence and on major issues like taxation and industrial relations he has promised that any change will be taken to the next election in three years' time. But many of his colleagues and barrackers still hope and believe that he will use the convincing victory to deliver sweeping reforms – and managing those expectations could be a challenge.

In the end, he achieved the aim he hardly dared voice nine years ago through sheer force of willpower and determination, rolling over a Labor party battered by his relentless attacks and its own seemingly endless capacity for self destruction, and wearing down the remaining concerns of voters who just wished that, for a while at least, politics would go away.

He may in fact be the first person to become prime minister of Australia by attrition. And he aims to use exactly the same qualities to stay there.

Tony Abbott: the journey from rank outsider to Australia's new leader | World news | The Guardian