Pretty accurate, Waleed

Abbott's adoptive strategy on policy

Waleed Aly goes through the remarkable list of Labor policies and initiatives which the Coalition has come to endorse.  He concludes:  

 All this is a testament to the brutal efficiency of Abbott's opposition. He's quite prepared to bludgeon the government with an argument he later rejects. It's shameless, but it works because he does it with confidence and a straight face.

As I have been saying, it is also very similar to what Rudd did in  2007.  He picked up on one or two things the public did want changed (Workchoices in particular, but also - and people forget this - closing the "Pacific Solution") but overall he just ran a populist campaign as the softer, kinder John Howard. 

Tony Abbott would not admit this, but he has, on the face of it, turned out to be running as the stable Labor Party.  (His one distinguishing populist, and more wildly wrong headed than Rudd on Workchoices, policy is on carbon pricing.)

In both cases, it's the shamelessness of the approach that leads me to not respect it.  If they are going to ultimately support a policy, do so during the term of Parliament, not at the last minute.

And with Abbott, with his completely opportunistic, uninterested and unprincipled  approach to climate change, I could never vote for him.