Abbott's leadership now in the "death zone"

It could have all been so different for the Lieberals. If they'd simply listened to the electorate instead of putting up last years budget disaster and defending the thing to the bitter end. Blind Freddy could have seen this coming, but not the Lieberals. 

Abbott's political demise is now plundering along full steam ahead. Who knows how many Lieberals will be caught up in the train wreck. The media is in a frenzy, gov leaks are like a sieve, Canberra commentators are predicting the end. It's not going to be pretty. 

Tony Abbott's beleaguered leadership has entered the phase where even baseless rumours tend to have a locomotive force. Such are the shadowy dynamics of leadership crises. 

Momentum is running away from Abbott with the danger to his leadership being clear and present. 

Colleagues are coming to the pragmatic conclusion that irrespective of the justice of it all, the sheer distraction of leadership instability may warrant a change. 

As such, a summary end to Abbott's troubled time as a Liberal prime minister has taken on a sense of the inevitable. 

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This is about something deeper – namely Abbott's desperately low standing with voters, and the assessment of the Prime Minister's frontline colleagues that his trust relationship in the electorate is terminally rent, irreparable. 

MPs who had argued that the PM needed more time to turn things around have been embarrassed by the welter of contrary evidence this week exposing such an approach as wishful thinking and even delusional. 

Privately, they recognise it is Abbott himself that is their biggest problem, citing his worthy attempt to shift the conversation to governing – with a national security statement, restrictions to foreign ownership of real estate, and the McClure welfare reforms – which he then comprehensively skewered via a pointless and damaging culture war over the Human Rights Commission. 

The government bled all week in Parliament trying to defend its politically motivated attack on the HRC President, Gillian Triggs. There could hardly have been a more graphic demonstration of the political cost of having "Captain Combat" in charge rather than a mainstream leader committed to problem-solving. more