Lenore Taylor Monday 9 February 2015

The substantial vote for a leadership spill – even with no official candidate on offer – bodes ill for the prime minister’s future

Tony Abbott with Julie Bishop (right), on their way to the party room meeting. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

Thirty-nine of his colleagues have effectively voted no confidence in Tony Abbott’s leadership. He resorted to making apparent promises about major defence acquisitions to win votes in a party room ballot. His rallying call was not the confident cry, “I’m the man to lead us to glory at the next election,” but just the plaintive, “Please could you give me a bit more time?”

Can Abbott’s win in the party room on Monday really be seen as a decisive victory, an endorsement, an end to the spectacle of a Liberal leader coming apart not due to the bastardry of colleagues but due to his own mismanagement of his party and his policy agenda? He lost 39 votes when no one was standing against him. Thirty-nine out of 60 if the frontbenchers stayed behind him, as he said he expected them to do.

Abbott tried to define the question as, “Does the Liberal party want to descend into Labor-like chaos and dysfunction?” The answer is obvious. It already has. Less vitriolic to be sure, but still chaotic.

Abbott emerged to deliver a statement to a television camera insisting that “we” – by which he meant the Liberal party – believed that when voters elected a prime minister they deserved to keep the prime minister until they changed their mind. Except 39 of his colleagues had just voted to show they did not believe that at all.

In a speech to the National Press Club – yes, that was only a week ago! – Abbott tried to claim a new and clear agenda for 2015 to set his leadership to rights.

But it wasn’t new, or it wasn’t finished, or it didn’t make sense. He kept talking about how the budget was deteriorating and the deficit was getting bigger, but then he claimed the “hard work” was done. His talking points were contradictory. They certainly did not inspire.

He promised to be consultative and then made a promise to a backbencher about awarding the submarines contract without consulting his cabinet, or even some of his South Australian ministers.

As well as the crazy decision to award Prince Philip a knighthood, this crisis was triggered by the disastrous result the Coalition suffered in Queensland. Now federal instability threatens to bleed into the New South Wales election campaign.

Abbott now has a chance to rebuild, to make good his promises to consult more, to explain his policies better to the electorate, to change. His supporters believe, hope, pray, he can do it.

But most think that if a prime minister loses 39 votes in what is effectively a leadership challenge with no alternative contender, he is living on borrowed time.

Tony Abbott's plaintive plea for time fails to restore his authority | Australia news | The Guardian