Tony Abbott has implicitly acknowledged that it's not enough for him merely to sneer at Julia Gillard. Or, as he put it yesterday, that he needs to show the people that voting Liberal would not just be "changing one bunch of squalid fixers for another".

It's been plain for months that Abbott's remarkable success in demonising the Prime Minister has carried a high cost - the electorate considers him a demon, too. The Liberal Party is polling well but Abbott has been polling badly. Gillard is unpopular but Abbott is even more unpopular in the latest polling.

Image problem ... Tony Abbott's demonising of Julia Gillard may have come at a price. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

He had offered himself to the public as a boot to stamp on Gillard's face. That's fine for an opposition leader. But who wants an angry boot for a prime minister?

Abbott gave a speech yesterday, "My Plan for a Strong Economy and a Stronger Australia", designed to shift emphasis from negative to positive in the new year.