On Tuesday, Tony Abbott implored his troops not to blow it. But some in the Coalition worry that it’s not their ill-discipline that could derail them so much as his unflinching faith in populism.
Dragged to Canberra for an unwelcome interruption to his barnstorming “stop the carbon tax” tour, Abbott is solidly on track to become the country’s next prime minister. If there is an “embuggerance” to the plan, as military types say, it is that the next election is more than two full years away.
Still, his success is remarkable given how improbable it seemed when he emerged as the wild-card winner of his party’s late 2009 leadership conniptions.
Doggedly focused on the prize, Abbott’s warning to colleagues however, was not made in a vacuum, but rather, against a sense of growing disquiet.
The Slugger, as some have dubbed the one-time amateur boxer, has done brilliantly, often rocking an unsure government to its very foundations.
But boxing is about footwork too and Abbott must tread a fine line between keeping his team on the cusp of success on the one hand, while guarding against hubris on the other - the assumption they will surf into office on a wave of anti-carbon tax sentiment.
Clearly it is that optimism, buttressed by the polls and abetted by an at times, amateurish government, which has enabled him to keep the blow-torch firmly on his opponent’s belly without worrying about his own back.
And it was in that vein, that he cheerily told his party-room of a “tectonic shift” among the very people the Coalition needs to win over in 2013.
Indeed, thanks to the Coalition’s relentless hammering, the battlers, whom he observed were, “essentially conservative”, are quite “worried” about the Labor/Greens alliance and are even “horrified” by the Government’s mishandling of Australia’s borders.
Then came the rub. Success, he told MPs, can be “fleeting and ephemeral”. And precisely because they are so competitive, they are being “watched like hawks” by voters. The next election was a lock only so long as they did not lose their shape.
“The one thing we must do above all else is to let the public know their future is in safe hands with us - that is how we must conduct ourselves’‘.
If Abbott was hoping the pep-talk would quell the first rumblings of discontent, he had about 24 hours before concluding it had failed.
That’s how long it took for the Chief Whip (and his four assistants no less) to sign a letter and send it out via email to all Coalition MPs branding Malcolm Turnbull and others selfish and arrogant for missing a division. (BTW, it was not a vote on a bill but a procedural vote on a largely pointless adjournment debate)
In the context of the Opposition’s success, the leader’s plea the previous day, and the ever-present Turnbull/Abbott leadership rivalry, it was one of the most cumbersome and provocative gestures yet seen. “Knuckle-headed” was how one MP described it.
It was just one of several blips for Mr Abbott recently. Indeed, May 2011 could yet go down as the moment when the Coalition’s uncanny unity began to crack.
The Whips’ letter appeared as a churlish payback after Mr Turnbull had angered colleagues by outlining, in all its glaring mediocrity, the Coalition’s direct action climate change policy.
It also followed closely on reports of a spirited telephone stoush between Mr Abbott and his economic spokesman Joe Hockey over the latter’s view that the Opposition was in danger of standing for nothing.
Discontent is on the rise. Mr Abbott - a self-declared weather vane on policy - now faces criticism within and not just from one side of the party.
His reflex to oppositionism, exemplified by his stubborn refusal to commit to plain paper packaging of cigarettes for example, is a gift for the Government. He says the Opposition will declare its hand on the legislation only when it is tabled. Some Liberals are already talking about crossing the floor to support the measure.
It is, of course, a no-brainer. And it sends a confusing message to voters who think they know Tony Abbott. The reality is, the uber-fit former health minister can hardly oppose it and remain credible, yet his refusal to declare is gold to desperate government. Don’t expect to see the final bill soon - why end the pain, the Government says.
And don’t jump to the conclusion that the problems are all from the moderate left of the party. At the same partyroom meeting on Tuesday, the highly respected former finance minister, Nick Minchin weighed in.
The out-going Senator Minchin is arguably the best practitioner of politics in Canberra, but he is also known as a man of principle.
Sources have revealed he made an “impassioned” plea to reverse a decision to oppose the Government’s planned excise on LPG - consistent with long-standing Coalition policy. Unconvinced that blocking the revenue measure was sound, he argued that good policy was, in the end, good politics.
Typically, Abbott refused to back down, brazenly admitting that between policy purity and pragmatic politics, he’d take the latter every time.
The argument over LPG, is important not least because it represents a half-billion dollar revenue measure. As one MP told me, “we can’t keep agreeing with government spending measures opposing savings and revenue measures and keep our financial credibility in tact”.
This is the danger for Mr Abbott. While Nick Minchin is on the way out, others are increasingly concerned about their leader’s flippancy with hard decisions.
They say the LPG issue is a cipher for deepening fears that the Opposition under Tony Abbott risks fumbling its historic edge as the superior economic manager.
While Mr Hockey has taken a battering lately, some MPs - perhaps a growing number - think it may be him who has the toughest job in politics: trying to look financially tough and credible while his own leader leaves him “swinging in the breeze”.
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