SAINTHOOD, you'd think, could hardly be more than the swirl of a cardinal's cassock away for Tony Abbott.

Assailed by unfortunate allegations that he had a problem with women and 35 years ago had assaulted a wall to intimidate a female opponent after a student election at Sydney University, Abbott awoke yesterday to polls showing he was about as popular with voters as the Pope at a gay marriage seminar.

Defenders of the faith, clearly, were required.

Hardly had the doors swung open on a new week of Parliament than Abbott's loyal knight, Christopher Pyne, fumed in bearing a torch for his leader.

''The Tony Abbott I know,'' he offered to any microphone in the vicinity, ''is just last weekend a person who went out with his local fire brigade to do a controlled burn-off, and spent Sunday leading a blind person to the end of his first full marathon''.