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Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott - Source: Reuters -
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Julia Gillard once described herself and Tony Abbott as the Punch and Judy of Australian politics.
They regularly put on a combative show, but it carried a sexual charge no pair of hand puppets could match.
So flirtatious were their regular exchanges on morning television and in the house, Abbott once suggested he should blow Gillard kisses. One viewer asked whether "they had a thing for each other".
But after he showed Gillard how to topple your leader in becoming the Liberals' chief last December, Abbott said the flirting had to stop.
And now she's the prime minister, the performance takes on a lot more gravitas.
But compared to the cold and stiff personas of John Howard and Kevin Rudd, Australia now has two leaders with genuine humour and a capacity for self deprecation, but with an equal ability to attack.
"People will respond to both of them positively. You will have a prime minister and opposition leader who, not so much like each other, but who behave like human beings around each other rather than with confected conflict that leaders seem to think is important," said ANU professor of politics Wayne Errington.
"Gillard and Abbott both seem to be larger than life figures that people can relate to."
They've had fun locking horns with each other during their parallel rise through opposite ranks.
Now they are fighting to lead the country, Abbott will find the street smart Gillard a tougher nut to crack than Kevin Rudd and they'll change their approach, says ANU political marketing expert Andrew Hughes.
"They'll get hard with each other. It won't be out and out hostilities but the flirtatious behaviour, the jokes will end," Hughes said.
"He'll target Gillard a lot more than he did Kevin Rudd. All he had to do with Rudd was get his blood up a bit and he had him on the run.
"But Gillard is very cool and very calculated, he'll have to strike with more precision than he ever did with Rudd, he'll have to pick his battles."
Some say Abbott might even have to tone down the masculine action man image to combat Australia's first female prime minister.
"Abbott might have to be less masculine in his approach because of the contrast with a woman leader, whereas Gillard can perhaps get away with a bit more toughness and sharpness than a male leader facing a woman can get away with," Errington said.
"It's a double standard in her favour."
Soothing the beast in Tony Abbott would be one achievement, but Gillard has already taken Australian politics into new territory.
An unmarried female prime minister with no children, a hairdresser boyfriend and no religious commitment offers a radical alternative to the devout Christian family men Howard, Rudd and Abbott.
Voters may look at a choice between the God-fearing rugby playing, boxing, surf lifesaving triathlete and married father of three and a career-minded unmarried woman.
Knowing that difference will figure in voters' thoughts, Gillard beat her spin doctors to it on Thursday and quickly embraced it as a positive.
Addressing parliament for the first time as prime minister, she said, among the many differences between her and Abbott, "we've made very different life choices".
The battle between the traditional family man and the modern woman will be tougher for Gillard to spin her way now she is prime minister, trying to impress the "working families" Labor purports to champion.
"She may find it very hard to make that connection between herself and people with families because how do you relate to something you don't understand, because you don't have kids yourself," Hughes said.
"She's going to have to come out very quickly and try to get that connection with the electorate, particularly with people with families because they're the ones that dominate the marginal seats in western Sydney and western Melbourne and that's where Labor has lost its core.
"Abbott's been getting those people back in droves. His message on strong family values is what the market wanted to hear.
"Julia Gillard is going to struggle on that criteria and Abbott will target it, he'll go after it, but he'll do it subtly."
As quick as she was to highlight her different life choices to Abbott, Gillard also made the point that while she has no children of her own, she knows what it's like to be in a family.
In her same address before question time on Thursday, she said "I am the daughter of a hard working family".
Her lack of Christian conviction, however, will be a harder one to rationalise with the Christian lobby which has already urged her to confirm "the values in society that proved attractive to many Christians throughout Australia under Mr Rudd".
She doesn't have to be photographed coming out of church every Sunday to have decent values and she spoke on Thursday about the values which have driven her to this point.
Hughes believes her spin doctors would be better off advising her not to try to win over the Christian lobby, but to leave her church going deputy Wayne Swan to fight Abbott in the pews.
