You may have noticed we have slipped into a post-election Australia in which Tony Abbott has already won and we are all arguing about what it means.
On Monday night, the opposition leader dropped into the ABC's studio in the Canberra press gallery to film an interview with Leigh Sales on 7.30.
After the interview he sat down to have the TV makeup removed, taking care to be nice to the person doing it, while journalists gathered like bees around a honey pot.
You can always tell when an opposition is likely to win because, suddenly, what the leader says is so much more compelling for reporters. The same lines Abbott has been spouting for years, like so much electoral fairy floss, have taken on a new meaning because pretty soon he will be able to carve them into legislative granite.
So the carbon tax will be gone. The boats will be turned back to Indonesian waters. The waste – the government coffee-makers, those expensive chairs and the 12,000 public servants that sit on them – will end.
Meanwhile, in the past week, Kevin Rudd has eventually worked out what Labor's campaign is about. He is finally combining internal advice with a new personal F-you campaign style, clearly on display on Q&A. His communication has become clear and unambiguous.
Unfortunately for Labor he is like a man stranded on the platform as the train leaves the station. He is gesticulating wildly but the debate has already moved to the makeup of the Senate. Nothing will save the ALP or any independent or minority party, unless they win balance of power in the Senate.
If the polls are correct then rock solid, implacable, unimpeachable executive government will reign. Gone will be that unwieldy hung parliament. Forget all the grand democratic traditions – it's like mustering stray cats.
And as Abbott's confidence grows his tightly fitted, tailor-made campaign clothing splits like the Incredible Hulk, revealing his own very interesting brand of muscular conservativism.
Voters are sick of visions, they want action. Abbott's pitch is a practical, roll-up-your-sleeves government.
Government is about serving the community and he has a longstanding record of community involvement as a firefighter, a surf lifesaver and a volunteer in Indigenous communities. He sells his Direct Action policy not on its detail but because he is a long-standing bushwalker.
In his award-winning Quarterly Essay, David Marr's conclusion painted a man torn between Values Abbott and Politics Abbott. This week that conflict is on display in longer format appearances where his messages are mixed.
Two examples are markets and education.
Sales asked him why so many of his policies are at odds with free-market, small-business, Liberal principles, including Direct Action (grants) on climate change, paid parental leave, handouts to Cadbury and giving a billion dollars to the car industry by changing back Labor's fringe benefits tax requirements.
"I would characterise the policies in question a little differently," Abbott said. "Look, I accept that we're not fundamentalists. I accept that we're not zealots. But I think you've got to accept for your part, Leigh, that the Coalition thinks that markets, by and large, work. Certainly I believe that markets have been the best way of generating wealth that humanity has ever come up with."
In an interview with Michelle Grattan for the Conversation, where he was asked the purpose of higher education, Abbott said while it was obviously a contributor to productivity, universities had a higher role.
"In the end universities are there to pursue learning, they're there to be the guardians of truth, they're there to push the boundaries of knowledge," Abbott said. "And while there are all sorts of economic spin-offs as a result of that, my conservative, old-fashioned view says these things are worthy in and of themselves, not just as a means to an end."
But one man's guardian of the truth is another man's propagandist. The national school curriculum has been politicised, Abbott said this week. His report card for keepers of the truth: could do better.
"[There are a] lack of references to our heritage other than an Indigenous heritage, too great a focus on issues which are the predominant concern of one side of politics," he said.
"I think the unions are mentioned far more than business. I think there are a couple of Labor prime ministers who get a mention from memory, not a single Coalition prime minister. So I think it is possible to do better.
"That said, in the end it is the preserve of the professional educators and the last thing that I would want to do or the last thing that Christopher Pyne would want to do is directly dictate to professional educators what their job is. But I think we're entitled to say, 'Could do better.'"
It was a message with muscle and we can expect a lot more strong messages on mandates between now and Saturday's poll.
Remember his mentor John Howard's victory speech in 1996, in which he claimed an "emphatic mandate" which he would use with "resolution and without qualification".
Abbott is already making similar noises and after Saturday he will finally get a chance to flex his philosophical muscles, never more so than in the Senate. Given his pledge on the carbon tax, when the Hulk's shirt finally falls off he won't be green.
