Abbott's Career Path.

  Coalition strategists are quite clear that international issues and national security are having the welcome side-effect of a much-needed stabilisation in the government’s poll numbers and the electorate’s perceptions of the prime minister.
But still the government ends its first year well behind in polls, having burnt through political capital with astonishing speed. And this was supposed to be the gently-does-it period of getting used to government. Much of the Coalition’s most politically difficult (and keenly desired) reforms are scheduled for the second term of its two-term plan (tax reform, workplace reform, reform of the federation) after securing a new mandate in 2016. No wonder the Coalition’s support base is getting nervous.

Abbott refuses to admit anything, contriving contorted explanations about why obvious cuts to projected expenditure cannot be viewed as cuts since actual expenditure continues to rise, or why legislated changes to policies do not amount to broken promises if they don’t take effect until after the next election. But voters don’t seem to be buying his tactic any more than Gillard’s.
  Voters react viciously when they feel they have been deceived. The question now is whether it is possible for a leader, and a party, to recover after breaching the trust of the electorate, whether voters, faced with an underwhelming opposition, can be persuaded to take untrustworthiness as a given.