Miranda Devine, Tony Abbott, Battlelines and the Liberal party's resident intellectual

(Above: whipping up a little fairy floss, candy floss to any passing American who doesn't understand anything about Australia).

If Miranda the Devine's return to the commentariat columnist ranks is any guide, the makeover of mad monk Tony Abbott still has a long way to go before it's consummated.

The remaking of the Mad Monk is so soft core it makes the average marshmallow look like it has a spine of steel. Your average doughnut would have the taste of stainless steel.

The occasion is the launch of Tony Abbott's book Battlelines at the Wharf restaurant. It's a fine place to go if you want to show international guests a harbor view with an arty backdrop and a rugged wooden pier redolent of the old wool export game, and that's about the level of Devine's response to the mad monk's policy exegesis.

We learn that the book is a crisp 182 pages long, and that bizarrely Louise Adler considers Abbott the Liberal Party's resident intellectual. Which coming from a socialist inclined protectionist is a bit like Gerard Henderson giving praise to a Chairman Rudd essay for the depth and breadth of its thinking.

But as for the contents of the book, you'll search in vain for any indication of Abbott's deep thinking from the Devine. Perhaps she hadn't read it at the time of writing.

Instead you get a gossip columnist's view of the event:

So on Tuesday it was New Tony on the podium, not the Mad Monk, Captain Catholic or Howard’s head-kicker, and his choice to launch the book, Sarah Murdoch, model, TV presenter and wife of media scion Lachlan Murdoch, said it all.

And along with the talk of the rehabilitation of Abbott and the way the book is his first crack at remaking himself as a contender for the Liberal leadership, there's an equally bizarre attempt to establish Abbott's cuddle credentials:

This was no pugilist Tony, snarling at Nicola Roxon, discombobulated by Julia Gillard’s flirtatious steel. It was a softer, gentler version, praised and loved by women, with his devoted wife, Margie, and three willowy daughters further evidence of his female-friendly persona – a must in any election, since opinion polls show the Coalition is faring worse with female voters than with male.

Well good luck to that makeover - but can someone pin back the flapping ears and soften off the smug sense of righteousness that still oozes from the man. Oh wait, they're also working on Abbott's body:

Even physically Abbott has changed. Once a burly, thick-necked rugby prop, he has leaned down into an ascetic surfing/cycling type you could almost suspect as a vegetarian.

WTF? A vegetarian. Next I could suspect him of being a greenie?

Of course to his family, which includes three sisters, and friends, he has never been the sexist bovver-boy zealot of his media caricature. But his plain-speaking boyishness and old-fashioned lack of artifice made him an unusual target in politics.

Well thank the lord it had nothing to do with him regularly putting on his steel capped shoes and going out to battle like a soldier of the lord, snarling like a pitt bull at anyone who dared say anything against his master Howard. It takes a long time to forget that kind of surly barking hound dog routine. But really deep down it seems he's a feminist:

Murdoch, who Abbott befriended two years ago when she was the co-host of Channel Nine’s Today program when he had a Friday morning guest spot with Gillard, was effusive too. In front of 200 guests she praised Abbott’s "humour", "self-deprecation", "subtleness" and "courage". She commended him on his "road to Damascus" conversion to paid maternity leave – which he advocates in the book, citing Jackie Kelly and other female colleagues as his inspiration.

Abbott said he had almost been moved to tears by Murdoch’s praise, and described the statuesque blonde as "a remarkable combination of beauty, grace and character and I am exalted by the association".

Oh the sweet boy is willing to cry. How touching. He's just like Ricky Gervais in Ghost Town, getting fully in touch with his emotional life. Moved and touched and exalted. Well most of the time:

Later, at lunch at Lucio’s restaurant in Paddington, Abbott’s new feminist credentials slipped a little when he again thanked Murdoch and then thanked Lachlan for "allowing" his wife to launch his book, a comment which caused wheezes around the table and a rueful grin from Mrs Murdoch.

Oh well, boys will be boys, and you can take the rugger thug out of rugby, but you've got to expect a little acid flashback to the thuggee every now and then. Amongst the sweetness and light and the sugar hit:

It wasn’t all fairy floss at the launch, however. Abbott also told Murdoch he could be "a potential finalist in one of your coming programs, Australia’s next top politician", which was probably not the subtlest way of hosing down speculation about his leadership ambitions.

Well it might not have been fairy floss at the launch, but it's fairy floss in the Devine's column, in an unnerving way that suggests she got hired of one of those fairy floss machines you see at the show (and available for your child's birthday party so you can ruin their teeth and sicken their stomachs).

Even the Devine's reporting of the arrival of Turnbull has the caramelised vanilla flavoring of the insipid sycophantic gossip:

Turnbull didn’t seem threatened by Abbott, arriving full of bonhomie, as promised, at Lucio’s about 3pm. He just looked worn down by relentlessly bad opinion polls, even after a week spent on his farm at Scone, decompressing after the ravages of the so-called utegate affair.

By then the champagne-fuelled party was in full swing, as Abbott ushered Turnbull around the horseshoe-shaped table of 20 gossiping journalists, politicians, a priest, the Murdochs and John Howard.

Quite different in style, the two men are remarkably similar in outlook – both Catholic and intellectually able, they are driven by the idea of duty and politics as a vocation, and their competition serves the country well.

But at least one thing becomes clear in the sub-text. Despite everything, Miranda the Devine has poked and prodded at the Abbott upholstery, taken a look at the mileage, kicked the tyres, but isn't buying, at least not for the moment:

But the underdog often has the upper hand in civilised contests. And Turnbull may be better equipped for the nuts and bolts leadership that would have made him the best premier of NSW, as Senator Bill Heffernan tried to urge him to be.

And just to emphasise the point, this celebration of the mad monk's book launch ends with the two real contenders gazing at each other across the glittering harbour in the emerald city, the slate grey blue waters a fitting locale for a valiant knight jousting against the evil resident despotic overlord as he tries to rescue the maidens and the free market economy:

After Turnbull and Abbott left the restaurant, those who stayed behind to drink dessert wine theorised that Turnbull’s demeanour showed he is not as ‘‘resilient’’ as Abbott and Howard, not as able to withstand the bouts of unpopularity that are an inevitable part of politics.

That may be wishful thinking, and perhaps the polls underestimate Turnbull’s rattling effect on the Prime Minister. Rudd has been known to gaze out from the veranda of Kirribilli House across the glittering harbour to Turnbull’s waterfront mansion in Point Piper, and wonder aloud if Turnbull is gazing back at him.

Yep, it's the kind of squelch you know and expect when dealing with the intricacies of the eastern suburbs and their born to rule world. So far, for all his crisp 182 pages and his feminist vegetarian makeover, Miranda the Devine's heart remains with hapless Malcolm in the middle and his record low popularity rating.

All well and good, but has MasterChef - which converted the Devine to the pleasures of niceness - now ensured her column will be written with a treacly sugary hundreds and thousands sponginess that makes it as indigestible as American pastry?

Whatever, don't take it hard Tony, it's nothing to do with the book and the policies, and the deep intellectual thinking, because we learn nothing about them. Perhaps it is the ears after all?

(Below: and don't forget the toffee apples).