Tony Abbott is at his best when he has something to fight. Ask Kevin Rudd. Or Julia Gillard. Or Malcolm Turnbull. Abbott vanquished them all with brutal efficiency, mainly because he had a devastatingly clear line of attack. "Great big toxic tax based on a lie," or something. Sure, that's more a mash-up than a quote, but with these eight words, Abbott destroyed three leaders. Even in power his best moments have come as he has seized upon an enemy, whether a Russian "bully" or an Islamist "death cult". 

But this week we've been asked to believe in a different character; a figure who looks and dresses like the pugilist we know, but whose every word presently seems to be of compromise and conciliation. "This is a government which is always capable of listening, learning and improving" he insisted as he unveiled an amended policy on GP co-payments. It was only one of three such announcements in half a week. First came Abbott's pledge to reconsider his paid parental leave scheme over summer, and last came his $200 million volte-face on contributing to an international climate change fund he clearly hates so much he said it was worthy of Bob Brown. But there's something revealing about the gently declaratory language, here. It's trying to convince us of something. It's like he's describing his attributes at a job interview. Trouble is he's had the job for a year, and he's not describing the guy we hired. 

Abbott's going for more than a policy change. He's going for a radical change in character. In modern politics conviction and compromise sit, lamentably, at opposite poles. Abbott styled himself as an avatar for austere conviction: the immovable tough guy for whom nothing could be worse than a "dodgy deal" with a minor party. Abbott created a political universe in which negotiation was almost dishonest – an abandonment of principles for political convenience. That, in brief, was his deadly portrait of Julia Gillard. Now, in the richest of ironies, he's forced to become her: an unloved prime minister, saddled with broken promises seeking the favour of minor parties and independents.

If the electorate's emphatic attitude to so much of the Abbott government's budget is any guide, this is nothing less than necessary. But it's also nothing less than awkward, and that raises the serious risk that it will look insincere. Abbott needs to be supremely convincing here, and he's starting from a long way behind. When you've delivered perhaps the most friendless budget in living memory, then stood by it for seven long months with precious little hint of compromise, you can't simply smooth things over by proclaiming yourself to be a great listener. You need to demonstrate it. If you're trying to reboot your way out of disaster, you need to make it unmistakable. You need to change the game so completely that all the most serious charges against you become completely redundant in a single stroke. Anything less and the critique against you gets a reboot, too. Advertisement

And that, I suspect, is where Abbott runs aground. His compromises are real enough, but also modest enough that none of them cause his opponents to break stride. At the end of this week, the most stinging critiques engulfing the government remain undisturbed. Abbott's revised GP co-payment might take pity on kids, pensioners, veterans and concession card holders, but there are plenty of poor Australians besides these and it will still hit them hardest. Labor gets to make that argument again, now. And it even gets to repeat that the policy doesn't help the budget. All the savings are being parked in a medical research fund for over a decade instead of paying off the debt we've been told will bring Armageddon upon our kids. The numbers may have changed, but the narrative has not. 

It's a similar story on climate change. Our $200 million contribution is welcome (even if it does simply come from our foreign aid budget), but it does little to deal with the overall charge that this is a government taking the path of most resistance. Australia's abstinence from the climate change fund was the very least of the facts that buttressed this allegation. After all, what's $200 million for a fund like that when you're trying to abolish a $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation that you've just finished telling the world is a similar, terrible concept? How does this cost-free gesture stand against the tide of reduced aspirations for renewable energy and a pointed commitment to a 2020 emissions reduction target that the government's own independent advice insists is way too skimpy? 

All this suggests that the government doesn't truly understand its present rejection. It seems to believe the electorate likes the government's general direction, but would rather it didn't quite go so far; that voters' concerns are really only matters of degree. In fact, those objections are philosophical. For better or worse, they don't object to the extent of the budget, but the very idea of it. You can't tinker your way out of that. 

That's the problem with being a fighter: you see compromise ultimately as defeat. Not a constructive process, but a destructive one to be considered only at the point of inevitable catastrophe. And so it cannot help but be half-hearted. "We had a good policy in the first place. Now we have a better policy," said Abbott of his GP co-payment. Such are the fighter's instincts that even at the moment of defeat, when you're trying to admit you got it wrong, you just can't help insisting that you've really been right all along.

Nothing can wipe the smile off this mug