To watch Tony Abbott make his way through yesterday was to watch one man in a death-struggle with his truth instinct.

This truth instinct has made trouble for Mr Abbott in the past.

It's like a ventriloquist parrot sitting on his shoulder.

Where any other politician might keep quiet, Mr Abbott's parrot will squawk abuse about Bernie Banton.

Where any other politician would murmur a bland generality about the importance of the family unit, Mr Abbott's parrot shrieks: "My daughter called me a lame, gay, churchy loser!"

The parrot's been under control pretty much, lately; aside from a brief outburst during an interview with Kerry O'Brien in May, the Opposition leader has been pretty much on-message, as they say.

Yesterday, Mr Abbott was working with a high degree of difficulty.

He had promised on Saturday that WorkChoices, that old demon from the 2007 election, was "dead, buried and cremated", and that an Abbott government would make no legislative changes at all to Labor's new industrial relations system for three years if elected.

(The comedian Wil Anderson immediately wondered on Twitter whether Mr Abbott might not have saved himself some work by altering the order of that process, ie killing, then cremating, then burying the policy, but let's not quibble.)

Mr Abbott's undertaking is perfectly democratic.

His truth parrot still backs a deregulated industrial relations system, but he is in no doubt as to the views of the electorate on WorkChoices, and he has therefore reached a decision that he will be governed by the will of the people.

The fact that he felt obliged to spell this out on the first day of the campaign gives you some idea of how resonant this issue still is, and how damaging for Mr Abbott personally.

His promise amounts, in effect, to an undertaking that he will do nothing further on workplace laws without first seeking a mandate from the electorate.

Entirely proper.

But the trouble with promising to desist from doing something for three years is that it immediately invites questions about what might possibly happen once those three years are up.

Yesterday's troubles started with Lisa Wilkinson on the Nine Network's Today program.

"So, you wouldn't bring it back? If you were elected at this next election and you move into the next election, is there any chance that you would bring WorkChoices back? You've only said that it's dead for three years. Is that one term?" she asked.

"Well Lisa, I have an election to win," said Mr Abbott's truth parrot before he could get a word in.

When Mr Abbott spoke with the ABC's Lyndal Curtis a little later, matters developed.

Curtis: Does that mean you will look at changes beyond that?

Abbott: No, it doesn't mean that, Lyndal. I mean, WorkChoices, it is dead. It is cremated - now and forever.

Curtis: But not reintroducing WorkChoices but making changes, making adjustments, amending Labor's Fair Work Act. Is that possible after the first three years of an Abbott government?

Abbott: We have no plans, no plans whatsoever to make any changes to the legislation. Not now, not ever.

Not ever?

This is verging on silly.

Is anyone to believe that Tony Abbott, or any Coalition leader, or any Labor leader for that matter, could ever be in a position to declare the current laws so perfect as to be immune to any sort of change in the future?

Next stop was Neil Mitchell's studio in Melbourne, where a series of aggressive questions awaited ("Why don't people like you?" Mitchell asked at one point), as did several suspiciously well-informed callers who wanted to know about some finer points of IR reform.

The "not now, not ever" pledge was hauled out and examined.

"How long would you guarantee not to touch the laws?" asked Mitchell.

"Well, obviously I can't say that there will never, ever, ever, for a hundred or a thousand years time be any change to any aspect of industrial legislation," conceded Mr Abbott's truth parrot.

"But the Fair Work Act will not be amended in the next term of government if we are in power."

Towards the end of this unhappy interlude, the radio host actually succeeded in inducing Mr Abbott to take out a piece of paper, scrawl on it "WorkChoices. Dead, buried, cremated. T Abbott. 16/07/2010", in light of the Opposition Leader's 7.30 Report Land admission that he sometimes said things on radio that weren't entirely true.

The cameras filmed the bit of paper, and within hours The Age had a handwriting expert on the job who somberly diagnosed a man in decline.

"I think at the moment he's on such a treadmill, he almost can't keep up with himself. He literally doesn't have time to come back and dot his i's and cross his t's."

After this ordeal, it was probably a relief for Mr Abbott to proceed to a phone interview with Brisbane's Triple M, in which he was merely asked if he and Julia Gillard had ever been an item, and whether he fancied redheads.

"My wife has browny, blacky hair and I have to say that's absolutely my preference," came the stout response from Mr Abbott, who fortuitously - on this question - is in full agreement with his truth parrot.

(Elsewhere on Brisbane FM, Julia Gillard was experiencing her own fusillade of hair-related inquiries. No, she'd never been called "Bluey". Yes, she had been called a "Ranga". No, she didn't mind, etc.)

But the net result of the day was grim for Mr Abbott - extremely grim. That "I have an election to win" looked awful when spliced into the nightly bulletin, which was all about WorkChoices, which was the result the Coalition had hoped to avoid.

Yesterday's events not only served to remind everybody about WorkChoices, but they also reminded everybody about the "get it in writing" thing, while simultaneously - in a horrid triple pike - evoking memories of Mark Latham, in 2004, signing that silly big cheque thing to "guarantee" low interest rates under Labor.

Poor Mr Abbott. What do you do when one of your deeply-held views is inconsistent with the majority will of the people?

It's something that John Howard struggled with from time to time, especially when he was trying to flog off bits of Telstra.

If you plough on regardless, you get in trouble.

If you take your lumps and agree to let the people's will triumph, people think you're hiding something.

And if you're Mr Abbott, your truth parrot will let you down.

Annabel Crabb is ABC Online's chief political writer.