“Abbott has always had a knack of sidestepping blame for his own hyperbole. Even wild exaggerations are rarely held against him. He retracts a little and is forgiven a lot. “What you’ve got is constant colour and movement,” says his old boss John Hewson. “He gets right in your face. He exaggerates; he grabs the headlines, even if he knows that the next day he’s gonna have to back that off.”