Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull says Prime Minister Tony Abbott has the complete support of the Liberal Party and insists his meeting with Clive Palmer last week was simply an "accidental dinner".
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And a furious Mr Turnbull has taken the government's supporters in the media to task for maliciously suggesting he could have designs on the party leadership.
Mr Turnbull said he supported all of the budget, including the $7 co-payment for GP visits and higher education changes and revealed he had had dinner with Mr Abbott in Canberra on Sunday night following the furore.
Earlier this week, Mr Turnbull labelled conservative columnist Andrew Bolt "unhinged" and "demented" and rejected the columnist's suggestions he was agitating to replace the Prime Minister."Tony and I are very close, we talk a lot, we talk a lot on a range of issues," he told radio station 2GB.
"There are people in the media, and Andrew Bolt was right up there last week at a time when we are all working our guts out to promote a budget, a budget that is unpopular in part...but which is necessary to deal with the financial crisis Labor left."
Mr Bolt's plan was to get people talking about a leadership challenge, Mr Turnbull said, which was a fiction.
"Bolt said that my disloyalty to Abbot was proved by the fact that I responded to him and I wanted to kick the story along. He must have done a dozen interviews after that exchange, he is the one who is kicking the story along,'' he said.
"Trying to suggest there is division in the Liberal Party between me and Tony Abbott is outrageous."
