By Tom Allard
- What Bishop told Abbott
- Kennett calls Turnbull "selfish" and "egomaniac"
- Sketch: Abbott gets played by the Canberra game
- Few tears on the crossbench for Abbott
- Tony Wright: Turnbull uncorks his bottle, spills hot sauce all over PM
- The Prince of Point Piper, ready to be crowned king
- Peter Martin: The Turnbull doctrine - tell the truth about the economy
As he looks back on his prime ministership, Tony Abbott will enter a dark place of reflection and painful introspection.
He will no doubt ruminate on his first budget. Delivered barely nine months into his term, it was the beginning of the end.
The budget was an extraordinarily inequitable attempt to repair the budget, offending the egalitarian streak that still runs deep in the Australian psyche.
Low income families were hit hard, the middle class even harder, sole parents hardest of all. The incomes of the wealthiest 20 per cent of Australians were largely protected, declining by just 0.2 per cent.
The Abbott/Hockey government's rhetoric about big new investment in infrastructure has proven particularly hollow.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Even more significantly, the budget marked a naked breach of trust with the Australian public, with its astonishing array of broken election promises.
If Abbott had hammered one theme above all others on his way to the top job, it was - unlike the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government - his administration would be one that would keep its word.
As he famously proclaimed in his election victory speech, his would be "a government that says what it means, and means what it says. A government of no surprises and no excuses…
"A government that accepts that it will be judged more by its deeds than by its mere words."
Prime Minister Abbott responds to Malcolm Turnbull's leadership challenge at Parliament House on Monday.Credit: Andrew Meares
A series of backflips in his first few months in office had already confounded the public, raising doubts about Abbott's truthfulness, but the first budget was the coup de grace.
In one document, new taxes were introduced; pension entitlements curbed; education funding was slashed by $80 billion; the budget of ABC and the SBS cut; and funding to hospitals trimmed.
Prime Minister Abbott and Julie Bishop during question time on Monday.Credit: Andrew Meares
All represented election pledges that were jettisoned and, with the possible exception of the cuts to the public broadcasters, core promises at that.
The government's polling slumped dramatically - and never recovered.
Illustration: Rocco Fazzari
Abbott's supporters and others have laid the blame for this calamitous political misjudgment - and the broader problem the government has prosecuting its economic agenda - at Treasurer Joe Hockey's feet.
Hockey's inability to build a credible economic narrative has hurt the government but the first budget was very much Abbott's document.
Abbott, for example, took the unusual step of bumping Hockey aside and chairing meetings of expenditure review committee as the budget was formulated.
The political calculation behind the budget was clearly to get the bad news out of the way in the first year of government.
The recovery never came, in large part to the seemingly endless series of gaffes and distractions by the Prime Minister, often under the guise of the "captain's call".
Abbott's political misjudgments ensured the public never got to hear a convincing argument from the Coalition on economic management.
Because the blunders were in large part generated by Abbott and his office, it meant loyalty from many Liberal MPs evaporated quickly as well.