Tony Abbott's Twitter battle rages on after a month in office A Labor party graphic that capitalised on the anger over the lack of women in Mr Abbott's cabinet. Picture: ALP TONY Abbott may have won the war to become Prime Minister of Australia, but his fight in cyberspace is only just beginning. While the nation as a whole voted him in, the Twittersphere has always been critical of Mr Abbott - and these voices are not going away as he nears the end of his first month in office. The top #auspol tweets on election day were almost entirely negative comments on the Coalition win. The top issues mentioned were the NBN, gay marriage and asylum-seekers - all controversial Coalition policies on which the typical, left-leaning Twitter commentator has a strongly different view. Another recurring theme was the idea that many Australians would want to leave their home country now Mr Abbott had taken charge. Most of the top hashtags used on September 7 were quite general, with phrases including #australiavotes and #snagvote proving popular. A notable exception was #stoptony, which received 184 tweets. Since then, the hashtag #notmyPM has taken hold. It was first tweeted at 7pm on election day, and has now been tweeted 1100 times, at a fairly steady rate ever since. The next spike in politics tweets after election day came on September 16, when Mr Abbott announced his cabinet, with 25,300 #auspol tweets recorded. The conversation was vastly dominated by the fact there was only one woman in this group of senior ministers, providing more ammunition to underscore Twitter's view of Mr Abbott as sexist and old-fashioned. There was a strong visual element to this backlash, with satirical graphics and doctored images of the Cabinet going viral and appearing in many of the top tweets. The ALP seized the opportunity to ride the wave of public opinion against Mr Abbott, producing a graphic illustrating how the gender balance of his cabinet compared to front benches in the rest of the world. Many Labor MPs joined in on an individual level, with leadership candidates Anthony Albanese and Bill Shorten getting hundreds of retweets for their comments. Chris Bowen became the most tweeted-about politician after Mr Abbott for commenting on ABC News that Afghanistan now had more women in its cabinet than Australia. Mr Abbott also came in for significant criticism over other structural changes, with many talking about the lack of ministers focused on science, disability care, higher education, tourism and resources. The gender debate continued to rage after the announcement, with Julie Bishop becoming the most retweeted member of the government with an image of herself being sworn in as Foreign Minister. The top image of the new PM was far less flattering, showing his face along with the following quote: "I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons." Then came the issue of climate change. There have been more than 5000 tweets mentioning both Abbott and the climate since his election, spiking on September 19 with 1200 tweets on the subject after Mr Abbott withdrew all funding for the Climate Commission. The top hashtags used in tweets about Mr Abbott since his election now include #notmypm, #climate, #climatechange, #nbn and #marriageequality. Mr Abbott, who embraced social media during the election, stayed away from it for much of this period, not posting anything from September 13 to 25. He followed that silence with inoffensive tweets about sport and one about Warren Mundine's appointment to the indigenous advisory council, a move likely to be seen positively by his Twitter audience. He has also tried to harness the increased Twitter interest in Indonesia that has come with his visit, as more than 11,000 tweets have been posted on the subject in the past six days. The previous spike for Indonesia came on September 12, when there were 1300 tweets, mainly focusing on the country's announcement that they would reject Mr Abbott's key "stop the boats" election policy. Although the top recent Indonesia tweet is an attack on Mr Abbott, many of the other popular posts are news stories about his activities, and the second most-retweeted post on the subject is one of his own. But the PM's detractors remain vocal. Greens leader Christine Milne was the next most tweeted-about politician, with 44 retweets for this confrontational post. The damage to Mr Abbott's social media status will be very tough to undo, and his polite posts are unlikely to make much difference to the Twittersphere's intense scrutiny of his every action. The Left is likely to continue to dominate Twitter for now, but at least Mr Abbott can console himself with the knowledge that that the nation's top job belongs to him.