Tony Abbott survives Liberal Party spill motion

Tony Abbott is not dead yet. He has survived a spill motion this morning by the narrowest of margins (61 – 39). Had the vote got into the forties it would have been extremely difficult for Mr Abbott not to hold a leadership ballot, in which case Malcolm Turnbull would have challenged and almost certainly won.

Mr Abbott is a renowned political fighter, but due to poor recent polls and a series of unusual events, dissatisfaction with him clearly runs high. How much time he has bought himself remains to be seen, but he is clearly a wounded beast.

It is likely that Mr Abbott will find himself under pressure to either make immediate changes to his Treasurer Joe Hockey and/or chief of staff, Peta Credlin. It is also likely he will be under pressure to make even further changes to the budget, watering down many of the supposed ‘tough’ measures. Ironically, the spending cuts themselves are not particularly tough, but due to poor salesmanship and contradictory messaging they were painted as such by many in the media.