For most of yesterday, Opposition frontbencher Tony Abbott's phone was switched off.
Caller after caller got the outspoken shadow minister's voicemail and if some of his colleagues are to be believed more than one of the messages left there were of the unprintable variety.
Abbott's ''tribute'' to former treasurer Peter Costello, as deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop labelled the Quadrant essay published in edited form in yesterday's Australian, described Costello as the Coalition's ''best political asset''. It's worth nothing that he managed to deliver backhanders, not only to current leader and apparent non-asset Brendan Nelson by using the present tense and failing to mention him even once but also to Costello by qualifying the praise with ''now that John Howard has gone''.
This apparently thinly-veiled attempt at wooing Costello pleased those of his colleagues who are dearly hoping against hope that he will return to lead them from the wilderness. But it sent a few others into orbit.
One said he was fed up with Abbott's pronouncements on the party leadership, describing the public musings as ''unhinged'' and ''pathetic'' and accusing Abbott of changing horses on an almost monthly basis. ''This is number seven in 12 months,'' the senior Liberal said. ''First it was John Howard, then Peter Costello, then himself. Then he voted for Brendan Nelson. It was Malcolm Turnbull on Monday [of this week, on ABC TV's Four Corners]. Then on Tuesday he was out backing Nelson again... By Friday, it's Peter Costello. Three people in one week!''
In a move some saw as an attempt to play self-styled kingmaker, Abbott went to see Costello recently to persuade him to stay. Second-hand reports suggest that Costello was amused, nothing more.
Ahead of last night's tribute dinner at the Melbourne Museum, nobody was expecting Costello to show his hand before the launch of his upcoming memoir in a fortnight. (If he's smart, he'll wait till he's sold a good many copies before he says anything either way. And he's certainly smart.) Increasing numbers are also expecting that when the decision comes, it will be to go. Nick Minchin, one of those who's been pressing Costello, has begun advancing the prospect of his departure and Nelson has been referring to Costello's contribution, apparently inadvertently, in the past tense.
The reason for the fury at Abbott's manoeuvrings is that he has reopened the leadership question just when some in the Coalition leadership felt they were getting back on track and making gains on what they still see as the Government's weakest issue: the economy.
Certainly, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd seems uncomfortable discussing the fate of the economy, contradicting his own mantra about ending the blame game (albeit in a slightly different context) by responding to all queries on the economy this week with the chant that it's all the previous government's fault.
He's right that 10 of the 12 straight interest rate rises were under the other mob and arguably that the persistent spendathon of the pre-election period only added to inflationary pressures. Of course, the global economic landscape is a not-insignificant element too as Rudd, sought to remind Kerry O'Brien's viewers on ABC Television's 7.30 Report on Thursday night, when he declared that ''Australia's not an island''. Er, we know what he meant.
But, on the economy, now Australians want to know what comes next, what this Government is going to do about those elements which are within its control. And thus far, they're not getting a sense of it.
Rudd's big National Press Club speech, billed as mapping out the next few months, didn't really do that. After listing the promises he'd kept (and keeping promises is certainly breaking with tradition), he focused almost solely on education.
This left observers scratching their heads and wondering why it was that the Government seemed reluctant to talk about matters fiscal in much detail.
Asked in Parliament and again on television about the possibility that the next quarterly growth figures could have a minus in front of them (two of those equalling a recession), Rudd chose not to reject the prospect out of hand.
This week's business confidence figures will not have pleased him either, adding strength to Shadow Treasurer Malcolm Turnbull's longstanding argument that the Government talked up the inflation monster (Swan called it a genie and said it was out of the bottle) so much in the first post-election months that business is now spooked.
By yesterday, Rudd was talking up the prospects for growth of 2.25 per cent in the June quarter of next year. But what of the period in between?
Watching all this from the backbenches and hurling the odd well-chosen interjection is Peter Costello.
The Government would dearly love to mount a no-holds-barred attack on the bloke that voters have traditionally criticised. But because he's neither in nor out, it can't, and it's struggling even to get traction in blaming him for the downturn.
Instead, it's resorting to the sort of hilarity sparked by Julia Gillard's jibe referring to the motto of Costello's publishers, Melbourne University Press. Books with spine, she quoted, adding ''from a politician without one''.
Certainly it was hilarious but also a bit risky. Why bother to attack a bloke sitting way down the back, even one who traditionally has been a bit unpopular? It made the Government look worried.
With all this talk of literacy and numeracy week, it's perhaps appropriate to refer to the school of thought (sorry) that says that when voters are concerned about mortgages and jobs, it's not wise to make jokes or be seen to be trying to divert attention by talking about other things. Not even education.
Maybe the uncertainty surrounding Costello isn't hurting the Opposition so much after all. Abbott could try that argument when he returns all those phone calls.
Karen Middleton is chief political correspondent for SBS Television.