Australia's new man

'The people voted for change and change they will get." Tony Abbott, Australia's prime minister-elect, is most adamant that he will see his new mandate implemented following a sweeping election victory at the weekend by his conservative Liberal-National Party coalition. But there's many a slip between cup and lip.

Although the coalition should have a comfortable 30-seat majority in the country’s lower house, the biggest since 2004, it appears that Independents and centre-right minority parties will hold sway in the Senate which has a final say over Bills. That will be particularly critical to any vote to repeal Labor’s controversial 30 per cent tax on mining sector profits and dismantle its carbon pricing mechanism, both Abbott central campaign promises.

And while many credit his victory to a disciplined and united campaign as against a deeply divided Labor, Mr Abbott’s coalition is also quite likely to break into open warfare over a number of the flagship elements of its programme. Tensions between rural-based Nationals and city-based Liberals, and even within Mr Abbott’s Liberals, over issues like regional subsidies and foreign land and company purchases as well as asylum seeker policies are highly combustible. A €3.25 billion paid parental leave scheme underpinned by a levy on 3,000 big companies is strongly opposed by the party’s business wing. Mr Abbott’s own leadership, won by the narrowest of margins, is as precarious as his Labor predecessor.

An early test could be the decision whether or not to approve the takeover of bulk grain handler, and the country's only remaining locally owned major agribusiness, GrainCorp by US firm Archer Daniels Midland. That is firmly opposed by many National Party MPs who have also been urging closer scrutiny of major Chinese land purchases, a policy that would seem to negate Mr Abbott's proud boast that he is all about making Australia, which has surged in recent years on Chinese growth's coat tails, open for business.