To get to the federal government's position on the asylum seeker question takes time. This sort of political and policy mess is built on much talking, manoeuvring and internal confusion, and its gestation period is long.

The confusion about values and direction was on display very early in Julia Gillard's time as Prime Minister. On the day she assumed the Labor leadership in June last year, Gillard expressed solidarity with Australians who favoured a hard line. ''I am full of understanding of the perspective of the Australian people that they want strong management of our borders, and I will provide it,'' she said.

Ten days later, Gillard offered a grab-bag of positions - a bit of John Howard's populist rhetoric, a dash of reflexive commercial talkback radio self-defence and some bits of sympathy for the middle-class left.

''I'd like to sweep away any sense that people should close down any debate, including this debate, through a sense of self-censorship or political correctness,'' she said. ''People should feel free to say what they feel. For people to say they're anxious about border security doesn't make them intolerant, it certainly doesn't make them a racist. It means that they're expressing a genuine view that they're anxious about border security.

''By the same token, people who express concern about children being in detention, that doesn't mean they're soft on border protection: that just means that they're expressing a real human concern.'' Everyone's a winner. It was a position of equivalence that gave no real guide to Gillard's ideal stance. Two days later, she announced the solution: a regional processing centre in East Timor, a proposal that died a slow, undignified death.

Border protection had long been a problem for the ALP. One of the harshest lessons for the Labor government during its first term - one its leading figures could not bring themselves to absorb - was that no matter what policy direction it pursued on this issue, it was bound to reap no electoral benefit.

The party's pollsters repeatedly surveyed voters' attitudes on the asylum seeker question. They did quantitative surveys that sliced and diced voter preferences. They conducted focus groups. Every time, they found there was a large, solid core of voters in critical Labor seats who had no sympathy for asylum seekers.

As one Labor MP put it to me during the previous term: ''Look, this is the way it is: there are a lot of Australians who would be happy to see these people get near our shoreline and basically have machineguns turned on them. That is a view that is out there. We will never please them. And by even acknowledging them, we only alienate our supporters who favour sympathetic treatment of asylum seekers.''

This dilemma was not news to Gillard, whose first frontbench job, when she was appointed to the shadow cabinet by Simon Crean in late 2001, was to put together a workable border protection policy as Labor's immigration spokeswoman.

Gillard's policy was a bit too hardline for many of her colleagues in the Labor Left, but it was acknowledged by many others in the party as a skilful, acceptable response to a challenging policy question - one that had helped sink Labor's chances at the previous election. It was Gillard's creative performance in the immigration portfolio that put her on the fast track inside the caucus and gave her a high media profile.

Perhaps the confidence in her own judgment she gained in that area, accumulated at a vital point in her parliamentary career, is what has been driving her down the path she has pursued on the treatment of asylum seekers in her 15 months as Prime Minister. The pursuit of Tony Abbott's support for amendments that would allow the revival of the Malaysia people-swap deal has been a course of Gillard's choosing. It was based on her judgment of Abbott and the nation's political sentiment, and, as it turned out, Gillard's confidence has been shown to be misplaced.

Yesterday, Gillard and Immigration Minister Chris Bowen did as good a job as they could of taking up the fight to Abbott and Bowen's opposite number, Scott Morrison. The opposition leadership's excessive expressions of concern about refugee rights are, for the most part, humbug. And the assertion that Abbott is somehow sitting to the left of the Labor Party on the human rights of asylum seekers is fanciful.

Gillard was correct to assail Abbott in the lower house yesterday afternoon for his recent embrace of human rights, given that he never uttered a squeak of concern during the Howard years. During that time, Nauru was not a signatory to the Refugees Convention. It mattered not a whit to the Opposition Leader, then a minister in the Howard government, that Nauru was the designated repository for those souls who sought asylum in Australia.

But the Prime Minister's accusations about Abbott's opportunistic humanitarianism can take the government only so far. This was a crash-through-or-crash approach by Gillard and she has crashed. Even if, somehow, the Labor amendments had made it through Parliament, the new laws would have been subject to challenge and who knows how that would have worked out?

In any event, that's not going to matter. Onshore processing - the option that the Prime Minister has spent the past two weeks condemning as massively expensive and not in the best interests of the country - will be resumed.

Gillard will try to lay the blame on Abbott. She will overuse that meaningless term ''the national interest'' and she will label the Opposition Leader a hypocrite. She is the one who will be seen to have lost out in her battle of wills with her opponent. And the government's problems with credibility and authority have worsened because its leader chose a fight she could not win.

Gillard To Introduce Migration Act Amendments To Parliament

meanwhile, back on the other side of ugly .....

I will donate $100 to the HSU's next Chinatown long lunch if Julia Gillard can get through the next week without using the expression ''Mr Abbott's relentless negativity''. But should the Opposition Leader change tack?

Labor's critique of Abbott has been forced to morph since the early charges of ''extremist'', ''erratic'' and ''out of touch with mainstream community values''. His signature policy at the last election was a generous paid maternity leave scheme.

Australians have curiously found Abbott to the left of Labor in his unwillingness to cast off asylum seekers, including children, to Malaysia. Abbott has resisted admonitions to reopen the industrial relations debate from the right of his party.

His views on climate change turn out to be much closer to those of middle Australia - willing to give it the benefit of the doubt but no interest in splendid global isolation.

When Labor adopted John Della Bosca's solid plan for national disability insurance, Abbott embraced it immediately, arguing only that it should start sooner.

After a masterclass in discipline from Abbott in the election campaign - where the Prime Minister went through a personal identity crisis over the ''real Julia'' - the ''erratic'' tag won't stick. So the one card Labor has left is ''negative''.

While I wish I could wave a magic wand and command the lion to lay down with the lamb, I regret to inform my dear readers (both of you) that the swords of Australian politics are not about to be melted into ploughshares. I understand the impulse of those who wish for a more ''constructive, collaborative and inspiring'' debate, but they are not about to get it and frankly, Abbott is not to blame. Look instead to the relentless, unyielding laws of Westminster democracy.

Under our system of government, it's a winner-take-all arrangement. The opposition does not get to test and prove its arguments in a parallel universe - it gets one shot at the title every three years.

Unlike the US, we have no term limits. A government could, conceivably, continue forever. My father spent 17 years of his life in the NSW Parliament - 14 of them in soul-destroying opposition. The titles, ministerial salaries, uplift in retirement benefits, views, white cars, staff and the status - all the butter is on one side of the bread. Much more importantly, so is the power to do the good things that motivated every MP to join a political party and run for office in the first place.

The opposition's place in the workplace seating plan announces to the world, ''I am a loser''. So the first job of any self-respecting party leader - on behalf of colleagues, the party and their cherished vision for a nation - is to win the next election.

There is a memorable scene in the movie Zulu, depicting the 1879 Defence of Rorke's Drift in Natal, where vast hordes of black and shimmering natives come charging towards the silent troop of doughty but terrified British soldiers. As the sound grows to a thunderous roar, Sergeant Frank Bourne gives a repeated command - ''Hold . . . hold . . . hold . . . '' - to ensure the limited available shot, in laborious single-load rifles, is not wasted by firing too early.

An opposition leader faces a similar challenge. If he releases good, detailed policy too early, a government will copy it and assume credit for it. If it has defects or can be misrepresented, it will be subject to a sustained campaign of smear with all the resources of the state.

One may say: ''Surely it's in the national interest if a bad government adopts your good policy.'' The opposition leader will reply: ''Yes, but even better if I can use my good policy a year from now to help replace the bad government with a better one.''

The next principle of opposition is a strategic insight from Napoleon Bonaparte: ''Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.'' It is much harder to create political capital than to destroy it. The goodwill of the people is earned in inches but lost in miles. A government can damage its own cause much more easily than the opposition can build a credible alternative narrative - which is why we say ''oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them''.

It follows that if the government is actively destroying its own credibility, the opposition should do as little as possible. I confess that I don't fully understand how or why this government lost the Hawke/Keating legacy of competent program execution, but Abbott is right not to deflect attention from that underlying reality.

The thing an opposition can do most constructively is assure the people their government will be kept on its toes, that its claims will be tested, that taxes will be spent wisely, mistakes exposed and reforms implemented. In multi-party Western democracies we have made a very deliberate choice - to tolerate higher levels of dissent and occasional discourtesy in our public discourse to secure more accountability and personal freedom. This is not an excuse for mindless contrariness or boorish behaviour and does not justify cat-calling or juvenile stunts, but it does mean conflict and scorching critique is an essential element of our system.

In order to deserve to govern, the Abbott-led Coalition will need to produce a detailed suite of credible policy prescriptions for Australia's circumstances in August 2013. They will.

If you want to understand Abbott's policy direction now, read his book, Battlelines - 187 pages of mature reflection and achievable solutions to some of the country's biggest problems. There is nothing approaching that level of policy thought published under the hand of Gillard, Swan, Crean, Combet or Shorten.

Tony Abbott's only real job is to get his team a credible shot at the Treasury benches. Whatever his strategy so far, it appears to be working.

Tony Abbott Leads Gillard as Preferred PM