The pitfalls of the hostile political interview are well documented.

There's the Gotcha Question, in which the hapless interviewee is confronted with his or her own newly-unearthed and embarrassing historical remark.

There's the Single-Issue Ack-Ack technique, in which the questioner simply repeats the same uncomfortable question over and over, drawing attention to the interviewee's horrendous evasiveness - the best example of this, anywhere, is probably the BBC's Jeremy Paxman, seen below at his supercilious best, asking Michael Howard the same question fourteen times.

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But what about the potential land-traps of the love-in?

On his return from a brief holiday last week, Tony Abbott lowered himself back into the waters of the Australian media, beginning in Perth with the mineral-rich shallows of the Johnny Young show on Radio 6iX.

Under Mr Young's merciless questioning, the Opposition Leader was forced to identify his favourite Beach Boys song (The Sloop John B) whereupon the former Young Talent Time host corrected him fondly, as he might have corrected a young Dannii Minogue stumbling over the lyrics to The Good Ship Lollipop.

"No!" Young enthused. "It's Do It Again. You know, the golden times should come back with Tony Abbott. The life we had under John Howard - let's do it again!"

Well - if you insist.

On the following day, Mr Abbott ponied up for an interview with Alan Jones.

As News Limited's Malcolm Farr observed on ABC's Insiders on Sunday, an Alan Jones encounter with Tony Abbott is not so much an interview, technically, as a rigorous assessment of the degree to which Mr Abbott agrees with the views of Mr Jones.

Indeed, these encounters typically involve lengthy expostulations from the host, periodically interrupted by brief opportunities for the interviewee to offer his support and congratulations.

Friday's interview (you can listen to it here) started with Mr Jones asking the Opposition Leader how anyone could possibly argue that Tony Abbott was running a negative campaign, given that every sensible person in the country was against a carbon tax?

Mr Abbott confessed himself flummoxed.

Wasn't (Mr Jones persisted) the tax going to kill off vegetable growers, dairy farmers and Qantas?

"Well, that's exactly right Alan," began Mr Abbott.

Now, if anyone on radio anywhere in Australia, EVER, was this nice to Julia Gillard, there would probably be some kind of rally demanding a full inquiry, or at least The Australian's Cut & Paste column would spontaneously combust.

But an interview atmosphere lubricated by this much love can make the odd banana skin - when it appears - especially slippery.

And when Mr Jones moved on to the topic of farmers versus coal seam gas miners, a banana skin presented itself fairly smartly. Would Mr Abbott side with his interlocutor with the good farmers toiling away to produce food for Australia, staring down the twin menaces of the carbon tax and the mining companies barging in on arable land without so much as a by-your-leave?

Every fibre in Mr Abbott's being, one must assume, screamed to agree. The Opposition is the man for the little man, standing with Mr Jones against the ritualistic humiliation of the farmer or small business holder by large Labor governments.

But Mr Abbott also stands with mining companies against the Government.

And he held out for a while, lashing himself to the mast as Mr Jones argued that farmers should be able to refuse prospecting access to mining companies.

In the end, Mr Abbott gave way, agreeing that "if you don't want something to happen on your land, you ought to have a right to say 'No'."

The Opposition Leader has been climbing down from this moment of over-enthusiasm ever since; first by refusing to comment and searching urgently for a taxi during a transfixing impromptu Perth doorstop on Saturday, and more formally today.

It's a good reminder that in the land of the political interview, the love-up can be just as perilous as the dust-up.

Annabel Crabb is the ABC's chief online political writer.