Four Corners: Mar 16

Next Monday Four Corners looks at why the Liberal Party came so close to toppling its leader after just 18 months in Government.

“The Liberal Party has dealt with the spill motion and now this matter is behind us.” – Tony Abbott

Prime Minister Tony Abbott says his Government has put its divisions behind it, and is now back on track, ready to deliver good government to Australians.

But is this really true? Have the divisions built up over the past year and the wounds inflicted as the result of the threat of a leadership spill last month really been healed, or is he on borrowed time as leader?

This week on Four Corners, reporter Marian Wilkinson reveals leaked communications, top secret decisions and interventions from outside the Liberal Party intended to shore up Tony Abbott’s leadership, that suggest the party remains divided.

The program tracks key government policy decisions that saw its popularity sink from highs to major lows. It tells how for much of the past year and half the Prime Minister has been cut off from his own backbench, making him incapable of understanding the impact budget measures were having on voters.

In the weeks since the party room spill, the Prime Minister has repeatedly insisted his party will not go down the road taken by Labor when it replaced Kevin Rudd with Julia Gillard. However others, even those that support him, offer this veiled warning:

“We want him to succeed and we want the Government to succeed… and I think that we will get there. But if it doesn’t, the first person to know that it’s not working will be Tony Abbott and I have every confidence that if that happens, and I don’t think it will but if that happens, I think Tony would do the right thing by Australia.” – Government backbencher

It becomes clear that while Tony Abbott may have come through one crisis, the margin for error in his leadership diminishes as each month passes and the next election gets closer.

As a former Liberal Cabinet Minister said:

“Understand this, as you get closer [to an election], every marginal seat member is thinking I could lose my seat… if things don’t change, the party room will…”
Q: “…Will change the leader?”
“Yeah, if things don’t change.”

Monday 16th March at 8.30pm on ABC.