KEVIN RUDD has accused Tony Abbott of unleashing ''the most hardline, right-wing people in the country'' onto the workers while the Opposition Leader flagged a strategy to win middle Australia, which he hoped to call ''Abbott's Army''.
As both men campaigned in Queensland, Mr Rudd said Mr Abbott's frontbench reshuffle, including the appointment of Eric Abetz to industrial relations, was evidence the Coalition would resort to Work Choices-style policies.
Mr Abbott maintained that Work Choices was dead but he would ''make a few changes to the laws that Kevin Rudd has brought in''.
He would not specify what safety net would underpin individual workplace agreements but said there would be one.
''We certainly won't be going back to a situation where the boss could just hand you a contract and say 'sign up, come what may,' '' he said.
Mr Abbott has moved hardliners into frontline positions in preparation for fights on climate change, industrial relations, debt and immigration.
He said yesterday that his immediate mission was to galvanise the Liberal Party base and to then chase swinging voters which, he said, could be called ''Abbott's Army''.
''Obviously, if you are going to win the election you have got to secure the people who regard themselves as rusted-on Coalition voters and then you have got to reach out to the middle ground,'' he said.
A Labor strategist said Mr Abbott was vacating the middle ground with his conservative approach, and said it was no good going back to the days of John Howard. ''People have rejected that; they're over it,'' he said.
The Government accused Mr Abbott of making a $250 billion blunder after he claimed the true cost of the emissions trading scheme could be $400 billion.
If Australia were to meet its unconditional target of reducing greenhouse gases by 5 per cent by 2020, the ETS would raise $121 billion over 10 years through selling carbon permits.
A leaked draft document at the Copenhagen climate change conference suggested developed countries, including Australia, could commit to a 25 per cent reduction by 2020.
Mr Abbott said this would turn the ETS into a $400 billion tax.
The ETS allows for a 25 per cent target but only if other nations agree to take sufficient action. Under this scenario, the ETS would cost $153 billion.
''In his desperation to run a scare campaign against action on climate change, Mr Abbott has made a $250 billion costings error,'' the Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change, Greg Combet, said.
In a further test for Mr Abbott, the emboldened Nationals started flexing their muscle by demanding that a system similar to the single desk for wheat sales be restored. Labor deregulated the single-desk monopoly last year following the AWB oil-for-food scandal.
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