By ABC's Marius Benson Tuesday 27 January 2015

Photo: The year Tony Abbott needed to establish as a fresh start has seen the decline in the Government's fortunes. (AAP: Lukas Coch)

This Australia Day is likely to stand out as a key moment in the fortunes of Tony Abbott's leadership, and he can't afford another "captain's call" like making Prince Philip a knight, writes Marius Benson.

Richie Benaud, a great cricket captain, maintained that when you were deciding on tactics, a key consideration was to assess what your opponent did not want you to do.

What did they fear, what course of action would they prefer you to take, what would they rather you did not do.

Tony Abbott is now in the unhappy position that Labor would probably prefer that he stay where he is. That the Coalition cause will be hurt by him remaining as leader, rather than having a change at the top.

It is a dangerous point in the declining political fortunes of a politician who is widely regarded as close to the most successful opposition leader Australia has seen.

The leadership is now a position under active discussion. That discussion began through the long months of declining polling fortunes of 2014 and it has only been growing. First, occasional private mutterings of politicians and journalists, some public questions, publicly dismissed and matched by equally public declarations of loyalty.

For all those public expressions of support 2015 had to be a turning point, as Mr Abbott conceded as he tried to hit the reset button with a ministerial shuffle and some new policy gambits. The Medicare forays were wildly unsuccessful, by the time the second backflip had been reversed nobody could decide where the Government was standing and Mr Abbott wryly conceded the whole affair had been "a bit inelegant".

The low ground of late 2014 was beginning to look like the lofty heights from the trench that was being dug through mid-January. Then came Australia Day. A nation, a political nation, which had argued the merits of Government policy and the selling of it, was brought to a halt by the decision to make Prince Philip a knight of Australia. That announcement was met with genuine disbelief, demands echoed around newsrooms that the source be checked. A short silence followed, then countless Australians rocked with laughter. Mr Abbott became an object of ridicule and there is no more damaging commodity for a leader.

And the PM was the source, apparently the sole author of the knighthood. The move brought open dissent from within his own ranks, quite apart from the ridicule heaped on it in social media and traditional media as the topic was taken up at Australia Day gatherings across the country. The knighthood was a "captain's call" in Mr Abbott's phrase, the latest in a series that goes back years to the original Paid Parental Leave policy.

Mr Abbott has made the point in recent days that the one clear lesson of recent political times is that you do not change leader. But that is not quite the lesson of the Rudd-Gillard circus. The lesson is narrower, more specific than that. It is that you do not change the leader without bringing the public along with you. The change can be slow, in the Keating-stalks-Hawke mould or abrupt as in the resignation of Barry O'Farrell, who resigned immediately after it was found he had misled a state corruption hearing over a gift of a bottle of Grange.

Those leadership changes were a political plus because the public felt it was a legitimate transition. The knifing of Rudd in 2010 is clearly the gold standard for how not to get rid of a leader. That was an exercise in number crunching by faction leaders in rooms that were once smoke-filled. But that bad example has not, as Mr Abbott appears to be arguing, inoculated all future leaders against any challenge.

It is remarkable that while at the beginning of last year Mr Abbott's Government was still surfing the wave of electoral success, just 12 months later the question is whether his leadership is doomed.

Broadly the process of toppling the leader - apart from the sudden scandal exit of the O'Farrell type - can be seen as a staged process. There are maybe 15 stages, although the arithmetic is not precise. Through the Medicare inelegance up to mid-January Mr Abbott was probably at something like 3.5 along that continuum. That is a stage where there are stories of backbench discontent, well sourced, but anonymous, public declarations of loyalty mixed with some concessions about untidiness, a disquiet that extends beyond the leader's known, active enemies. The leader's role is, at this stage, to express impatience with unsourced stories, brushing them aside to concentrate on "things that matter to Australians".

But on Australia Day Mr Abbott vaulted along the road to non-leadership, approaching double figures on the progress to the exit door. Politics is not a science, it is played out at a level of uncertainty that makes the quantum world look like clockwork. But the evidence of discontent, growing discontent, is unarguable.

Government members are now publicly criticising Mr Abbott. Fairfax papers are reporting North Queensland Liberal National MP Warren Entsch saying: "I can't understand why" Mr Abbott decided to honour a British royal. "For the life of me I can't understand why Prince Philip. I've got a dozen people in my electorate, any one of them would be more worthy." Mr Entsch added that he was "not pushing for a change in leader, I'm looking for significant change in leadership."

It is remarkable that while at the beginning of last year Mr Abbott's Government was still surfing the wave of electoral success, just 12 months later the question is whether his leadership is doomed. One key consideration in answering that is another question: "If not Tony Abbott, who?"

Mark Kenny was reporting on the Fairfax site three days before Australia Day that right wing figures in the Liberal Party were overcoming their animosity to Malcolm Turnbull, but for some a Labor government is still preferable to a Turnbull return, for now. Julie Bishop is a shining star of the Government, although starring as Foreign Minister, where most policy is not in dispute or of marginal impact, is easier than selling the domestic policies that have stalled the Abbott administration.

Joe Hockey's stocks have fallen more steeply than the Prime Minister's in office. And Scott Morrison, while seen as a star performer, runs fourth out of four in public polling on alternative leaders.

Is there a way back for Mr Abbott? Of course, the future is never certain. But the year he needed to establish as a fresh start has seen the decline in the Government's fortunes deepen. And it is hard to turn that around if you are trying to sell policy initiatives while all the questions are about your latest perceived gaffe.

This Australia Day is one that is likely to stand out as a key moment in the fortunes of the leadership of Mr Abbott. His Prime Ministerial stocks have never been lower and he can't afford another misjudged "leader's call". And Labor seems content to see him stay just where he is.

Marius Benson can be heard covering federal politics on ABC NewsRadio Breakfast each weekday morning.

Australia Day a tipping point for Abbott - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)