A happy and confident man should speak faster Tony Abbott's speech patterns as Prime Minister are to some extent a metaphor for his first months in office - much caution, but too little identity: Mr Abbott speaks 100 words a minute slower in media interviews than he did in opposition, and also speaks in a more monotone voice, according to Cate Madill, the director of the voice research laboratory at the University of Sydney's faculty of health sciences... Her analysis found his interview responses dropped from 216 words a minute to 108 words a minute... ""There is always a balance between authority and spontaneity, but the hard part is you risk losing the sense of who you are, and that was what Julia Gillard suffered from. I think he's now on a par with her wooden presentation style...