When Tony Abbott announced his parental leave policy it took his colleagues by surprise. It shouldn't have.
While he bypassed shadow cabinet to make the decision, he had canvassed it in Battlelines, the biography-cum-leader's job application he had written after the fall of the Howard government.
When Abbott took on the Liberal leadership he knew he was too much of a "known known" and that many Australians had taken a preconceived set against him as a chauvinistic, Catholic troglodyte.
Advertisement
If he was going to be prime minister of Australia he needed an issue to shatter that preconception by positioning himself as both modern and appealing to Australian women.
And a small-target policy wouldn't work: it had to be large-target.
Parental leave was the issue that was going to show he had moved with the times and was going to appeal to as broad a cross-section of women as possible, right up into the professional ranks, where much of the soft-Left and Greens vote hides.
Our polling says that not only has this strategy failed, it has rebounded on Abbott.
He's taken Labor on in welfare, a field in which it is seen as being strong, left it unscathed, and in the process damaged himself on the economy, an area in which the Liberals have credibility.
When we asked our 2,151 respondents earlier this week to choose between the government's parental leave scheme and the opposition's, most went for the government's.
Advertisement
Women were more likely to choose the government's scheme than men, particularly women with children, although this tendency was less marked with younger women who were the primary target of Abbott's plan.
The government's scheme starts in January next year and supports a family for 18 weeks at $544 a week. The opposition's starts in July 2012 and will pay at the mother's salary capped to $75,000.
It seems counterintuitive that voters would spurn a more generous scheme, but there are good reasons for it.
One is the sheer size of the opposition's promise.
It is so large voters believe it would be sacrificed if an Abbott government needed to make budget cuts, particularly as they don't believe the commitment is heartfelt in the first place.
In contrast, they see the ALP plan as a good first step and one that is pitched at a level commensurate with other welfare payments and is affordable.
If you view parental leave as part of the social security system, then the idea that wealthy families should get greater assistance appears wrong.
It doesn't occur in any other area, including the age pension, unemployment benefits or family tax benefits, where it could be tied to a previous income but isn't.
This leads one respondent to suggest it would be fairer to implement a HECS-style "breeder pays" parental leave scheme.
It leads other respondents to see the scheme as inequitable and opine, in echoes of the school funding debate, that the Liberals always look after the better-off.
Then there is the fact most voters won't receive a direct benefit from either scheme, leading 50 per cent of them to be neutral, or to believe money from either would be better spent in other areas.
This is particularly true of Liberal voters, who frequently express the view that couples raising children should be prepared to foot the bill because "we never got it [parental leave]".
Liberal voters are also concerned Abbott's scheme will be paid for by an impost on businesses: effectively a tax increase, which will feed through into the price of consumer goods, so we all end up footing the bill.
Abbott had three strengths going into this campaign. One was his authenticity, another the government's managerial failings and the last the good economic record of the Liberal Party.
In this policy he has sacrificed all three.
Voters don't think it is an honest policy, don't think it is competently conceived and see it damaging the economy.
Abbott is unconventional, and has taken the Coalition closer to victory than any other Liberal in this parliament could have done, partly because of that unconventionality.
When about 70 per cent of the population favoured action on climate change, he won the Liberal leadership opposing it, then used that position to fatally wound Kevin Rudd. The experts didn't see it coming.
The parental leave policy is part of that pattern of behaviour, but this time it has failed to deliver political benefits.
It's a bad mistake, because the marginal seats in Queensland and NSW, where the swings are to be had, are full of younger families who will be more aware of this policy than most other Australians, because it is aimed at them.
It could be the difference between winning or losing, but without taking risks he wouldn't have been so close in the first place.