Australia's Tony Abbott on track to win prime minister post after years in political doldrums The mild public reaction to Abbott's provocative remarks represents a striking turnaround for a man who was once among the least popular political leaders in modern Australian history. Now he is the front-runner in an election likely to end Labor's six years in office and deliver power to the Liberals - a center-right party that, despite its name, is ideologically closer to the U.S. Republican Party than to the Democrats. The transition would not necessarily trigger changes visible abroad: The two parties have similar stances on a range of foreign policy matters, from tough asylum policies to maintaining close ties with Washington. But it would have a palpable effect at home, where Abbott has pledged to cancel some policies embraced by the left, including a pending carbon-emissions trading scheme. Another promise, which even some in his party have called too generous, is a plan to give all working mothers six months paid leave to look after their new babies. Funded by a tax on business, it would fully replace salaries of up to $135,000 a year, a high threshold Abbott hopes would encourage more successful career women to have children. Abbott proposed the idea in 2009, the year he was elected head of the Liberal Party, which was trying to regroup after a big election loss in 2007. As leader, he oversaw improvement in the party's fortunes but remained unpopular himself. Experts say his tough and sometimes personal attacks on the Labor government and its first female leader, former prime minister Julia Gillard, turned off many voters. Action-man type Even by the matey standards of Australian politics, Abbott - who in his 20s briefly trained to be a Catholic priest - is seen by some voters as holding overly traditional views on the role of women. He once asked rhetorically, in a discussion about the rarity of women in powerful positions in Australia: "What if men are, by physiology or temperament, more adapted to exercise authority or to issue command?" "He is an action-man type guy," said John Wanna, a professor at Australian National University and one of Australia's top political scientists. He's also the kind of man who would open the door for a lady. One of Abbott's friends and a former Liberal member of Parliament, Ross Cameron, said the Labor Party had unfairly portrayed Abbott as anti-women for political purposes. "He is just as mystified by them as the rest of us," Cameron said. A Rhodes Scholar who boxed at Oxford, the 55-year-old might be one of the world's fitter leaders. Often photographed in a tight-fitting bathing suit, Abbott runs or cycles several times a week before dawn. He finished the 2010 Australian Ironman triathlon in 13 hours, 57 minutes, placing him in the middle of his age group in the grueling event.