THE Liberals have spent a couple of weeks getting Kevin Rudd's...

THE Liberals have spent a couple of weeks getting Kevin Rudd's range. Now they're about to open up on him with an artillery barrage.

A big-budget Coalition ad campaign to be launched tomorrow will include a positive element - Tony Abbott talking about his team and his plan, and stressing strength and stability.

The commercial is made with high production values. It has tested well with focus groups. Abbott looks and sounds good.

But, as a senior Liberal said to me today: "We both know what works in politics, Laurie."

By that, he meant a negative ad that will alternate with the positive one will have a greater impact. And he is almost certainly right.

Since Rudd toppled Julia Gillard, Abbott and his team have looked uncertain about how to respond. There was no co-ordinated theme to their attacks on the new opponent.

Some Liberal MPs have wondered openly why ads were not rushed to air getting stuck into the resurrected Prime Minister, especially since Labor ran its own commercials with Rudd talking about education, broadband, healthcare, jobs and the economy.

Part of the explanation, it turns out, is that Coalition strategists were waiting for market research on the best way to hit Rudd.

It has become almost a truism of politics in recent years that Labor is the party of spin and focus groups. The truth, though, is that, while they are quieter about it, the Liberals often do it better.

Abbott's famous (and effective) slogans are the product of focus group research. So are many of his most devastating attack lines.

What this latest research showed, perhaps not surprisingly, was that Rudd is highly vulnerable to the "all talk and no action" charge, the allegation that he promises but fails to deliver.

A key word that emerged from the groups in reference to Rudd was "fake". Similar words and phrases bobbed up frequently.

And suddenly they are being spouted by the Coalition leadership. "Flim-flam" seems to be Abbott's favourite. And today, shadow treasurer Joe Hockey went through the whole litany, saying: "I have known Kevin Rudd for years ... He is just full of guff ... He is a fake ... He is a complete fake ... He's full of it."

That kind of thing, though, risks alienating some voters. And Rudd tried to inoculate himself against it when he said in his TV commercial: "I believe all Australians are sick and tired of negative politics. I believe people want all of us to raise the standards."

An important message from the focus groups was that ads would be more effective if they attacked the record rather than the man.

The negative 60-second Liberal commercial about to hit the airwaves does just that. It is calm in tone and fact-based rather than personality-driven, and more powerful as a result.

Rudd is a great campaigner. He knows how to dominate the mainstream media. He is quick on his feet, a whirling dervish compared with Julia Gillard - and a constantly moving target is not easy to hit. But the calculation behind this ad is that he can't run away from his first term as prime minister. As a voice-over tells viewers that Rudd left a trail of disaster, a list appears on screen.

"Fact: Kevin Rudd was borrowing $100 million every day.

"Fact: Now we have a $254 billion debt.

"Fact: He wasted up to $8 billion dollars on school hall rip-offs.

"Fact: He was the architect of the roof batts disaster.

"Fact: In 2008 he dismantled our border protection polices and now 45,000 boat people have flooded in.

"Fact: He attacked our mining industry with a super profits tax that failed.

"Fact: He did a backflip on the carbon emissions trading scheme and supported the world's biggest carbon tax.

"Fact: With five Budget deficits and the carbon ta,x Kevin Rudd and Labor have driven up the cost of living.

"Fact: Now he's divided the Labor Party again with one-third of cabinet ministers refusing to work with him."

According to a Liberal front-bencher, focus group feedback shows "boats, waste, deficit and debt work best".

Labor will argue about the accuracy of the list of alleged facts but to do so it will have to engage with it. The Liberal advertising launch signals the real start of the Abbott v Rudd battle.

Those close to Abbott deny being spooked by the dramatic increase in Labor's opinion poll ratings since the leadership change. Some, in fact, say it has been a blessing for the Coalition.

"It has reminded people that Labor can win and that's a very good message for us," says a Liberal insider.

"Before, everyone presumed we had the election in the bag and that's a dangerous state of mind for any political party to get into."

And, in a reminder that the more things change the more they stay the same, a member of the Liberal campaign team remarked today that the new advertising campaign was similar to one the party had ready to roll in mid-2010.

One of the commercials made then showed a couple on a couch shaking their heads as they watched the then prime minister talking on TV. But Rudd was rolled, Gillard took his place and that ad never went to air.

Laurie Oakes is political editor for the Nine Network. His column appears every Saturday in the Herald Sun

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/liberal-big-guns-take-aim-at-kevin-rudd/story-fni0fha6-1226678690340