The Coalition talked for years about a back-to-basics curriculum like the one unveiled by Julia Gillard yesterday. So you would think Abbott would be pleased, right? Wrong.

He said it was ''political correctness run riot''. With an analysis based on word search, his education spokesman, Christopher Pyne, denounced it for containing 118 references to Aboriginal people but none to the Magna Carta, and referring more often to Asia than Britain.

He saw evidence of a return to the ''black armband view of history'' in the fact four-year-olds would learn about ''Sorry Day''. A closer reading shows kindergarten students will be taught about the passage of time through their own families' stories, including ''commemorative events such as birthday parties, religious festivals … and community commemorations (Anzac Day, Sorry Day)''.

Even before we have seen the government's hospital plan Abbott has attacked it for being rushed out as a diversion from the insulation fiasco and also for not being published sooner. He has castigated Kevin Rudd for not backing his idea for local control of hospitals and then said the Prime Minister looked ''desperate'' when he appeared to support it.

Abbott has done well so far with his street-fighter strategy of opposing everything and conceding nothing. But the Coalition has also had some genuinely bad government policies to work with.

Abbott is determined to also discredit policies much closer to the Coalition's views. The black armband criticism is designed to take some gloss off a reading, writing and 'rithmetic curriculum that most parents will love. He has even exhumed the strategy of referring - during discussion of health - to Rudd's Queensland-bureaucrat-days nickname of ''Dr Death'', which for the record had nothing to do with the infamous Bundaberg doctor Jayant Patel.

Abbott is landing blows, but eventually saying no to everything looks obstructionist and opportunistic.