It’s a rare good day for Prime Minister Abbott today with several stories suggesting his immediate crisis has passed. The first is Malcolm Turnbull offering praise, from the AFR:
Malcolm Turnbull has lauded Tony Abbott as an intelligent, courageous, brave and thoughtful man but added the only attribute that really matters is that the Prime Minister has the majority support of colleagues.
As well, Peter van Onselen lays into IPSOS:
LEADING pollsters have lined up to condemn the overreach of Fairfax’s new polling boss, Jess Elgood, when analysing Ipsos’s poll results in Monday’s Fairfax newspapers.
Ms Elgood was quoted in The Sydney Morning Herald saying: “They have read the writing on the wall for Mr Abbott … It possibly indicates that the voters have already moved on from Mr Abbott.”
…The results did not fit the narrative of commentators that the Prime Minister’s poor performance was damaging the government’s standing.
Fair enough.
Abbott has clearly shifted to more palatable policy for the punters and one should expect that to offer some lift in the polls. As well, the Libs appear to be on track to retain NSW comfortably so that takes some of the heat out of the issue.
As for whether his leadership is now secure, I very much doubt it for two reasons. The first is that he is Tony Abbott and it won’t be long before he sticks his foot in his mouth again. The second is that the deteriorating economy will not go away and Abbott will be blamed.
