Chatter about Canberra insider games has followed Tony Abbott to Adelaide, with a $1bn roads announcement entirely overshadowed by leadership speculation.
The prime minister on Monday announced an investment of $985m, jointly funded by the commonwealth and the South Australian government, to build the North Connector project.
At a press conference in Adelaide, he faced questions about leadership and little else. He said no fewer than seven times that he would not engage in “Canberra games”.
“I’m just not going to chase all of these rabbits down all of the burrows that you’re inviting me to go down,” Abbott told reporters on Monday. “I’m just not going to play the Canberra games. Other people can play Canberra games. The public don’t like this insider gossip. The public don’t like the Canberra games and as far as I’m concerned I’m never going to play them.”
He did, however, rule out going to an early election.
“I expect that the government will go to the middle of next year and maybe a bit beyond, because that’s what we were elected to do three years ago,” he said.
Senior colleagues were asked if they still backed Abbott, as leadership speculation threatened to overshadow the government’s legislative agenda ahead of a crucial byelection this weekend.
Abbott survived a leadership spill in February after asking colleagues to give him six months to turn the polls around, but he could face another challenge to his leadership before the end of the year.
The ABC reported that the challenge will occur regardless of whether Andrew Hastie, the Coalition candidate for Canning in Western Australia, wins this Saturday’s byelection.
The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, has rejected the suggestion that the prime minister faces an imminent leadership challenge, which unnamed colleagues have described as the “low-risk option” to Fairfax media.
“I don’t accept that assertion,” he told ABC TV during a Monday morning media blitz. “As far as I’m concerned, Tony Abbott enjoys the strong and overwhelming support of the party room.”
Cormann would not weigh in to reports that party whip, Andrew Nikolic, texted Malcolm Turnbull to ask him to definitively rule himself out as a leadership contender. Turnbull, the communications minister, told Nikolic that doing so would add to leadership speculation.
“I’m not going to give public advice to any of my colleagues,” Cormann told ABC Radio. “I have a very good relationship with Malcolm Turnbull. Malcolm is a valued, very senior member of our team and I look forward to working with him going forward.”
Bronwyn Bishop, who resigned as Speaker of the House last month following ongoing expenses scandals, refused to back Abbott when asked by reporters in Parliament House.
“I don’t think I need to add to the commentary,” she said.
The social services minister, Scott Morrison, denied that he had been canvassed for positions in the leadership team of a Turnbull government.
“When you’re not engaged in that sort of nonsense, people don’t talk to you about that sort of nonsense, other than in press conferences like this,” he told reporters on Monday.
Earlier in the morning, he told Macquarie Radio that he had “no reason to believe” that his colleagues were planning to mount a challenge against Abbott.
He said he has not seen Turnbull plotting against the prime minister.
“He hasn’t done anything to me,” Morrison said. “I support the prime minister. I’m not about to get into a slanging match about what others say.”
Western Australian politicians are likely to be concerned about the impact of a swing away from the government in the Canning byelection.
Publicly, however, they are toeing the line.
“I support the leader,” the assistant immigration minister, Michaelia Cash, told reporters on Monday. “I’m not going to indulge in leadership speculation.”
Talk of a potential leadership spill threatens to overcome the government’s legislative agenda during this sitting week of parliament, the last for a month.
“Speculation is unhelpful for the government,” the assistant education minister, Simon Birmingham, told Sky News on Monday.
Cormann said he supports the leadership team of Abbott and his deputy Liberal leader, Julie Bishop.
“I don’t get distracted by some of the political noise around,” the finance minister said.
The increased leadership chatter is unlikely to help the Coalition’s standing in Canning, where voters will go to the polls on Saturday following the death of sitting member Don Randall.
The Fairfax/Ipsos poll, released in Fairfax publications on Monday, has found that the Coalition faces a major backlash in the south-eastern Perth electorate.
The survey of 1,003 people shows that the Coalition has seen its margin in that electorate fall to just 2%. It secured a margin of 11.8% at the last federal election.
The Coalition’s Andrew Hastie is ahead by 52% to 48% against Labor’s Matt Keogh on a two-party-preferred basis.
If the Coalition were to suffer an overall swing of the same margin – 10% – at the next federal election, it would mean the loss of 42 seats.
Cormann said that the government was working hard to secure the seat for Hastie.
“We’re doing everything we can to earn the trust of the people of Canning again,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can to win.”
A Galaxy poll released over the weekend also shows a swing of 10% away from the Coalition.
“I just want us to have a very strong result [in Canning],” Abbott said, when asked about the opinion poll on Sunday. “I’m just not going to get into this kind of what would be a good result, what would not.”
The government’s standing with the public has nose-dived in the two years since the last federal election, with Labor now holding an eight-point lead over the government in the two-party-preferred stakes in the latest Newspoll survey.
Abbott has failed to lift either the government’s standing or his own popularity since the February spill attempt. His overall satisfaction rating now sits at -33%.
“Tony Abbott is in a position where he has not delivered in the last two years,” the shadow citizenship minister, Michelle Rowland, told Sky News, adding that the prime minister has “burnt the political capital” he gained after the election.
“[Labor is] ready for an election, whenever that might be,” she said.
