The ALP and the Coalition face uncertainty over their leaders but with the carbon tax Julia Gillard may have turned a corner.
FOR SOME time many prominent political race callers have been operating on two assumptions.
First, Labor will almost certainly lose the next election.
Second, Julia Gillard will not be Prime Minister much longer.
Rarely have so many proselytised with such unanimity on a result so far out from an election or with such unerring confidence in the demise of a prime minister. We hear regardless of her Government's week-to-week political fortunes that Gillard is finished - a ''dead woman walking''.
She will, we're told, face a challenge, certainly by next Easter.
Then come the scenarios, sometimes a hotch-potch of half-information and wishful thinking - for everyone wants to say ''I told you so first''.
Yes, there is deep Labor unease about how the Government is travelling, about Gillard's conveyance to voters of her Government's plans and, yes, significant achievements. Some very bad political decisions have reflected even more poorly on her judgment.
But there is also a sense in caucus that she and her Government may have turned a corner and may be slowly, steadily starting to win the electoral respect that will once again drive federal Labor to competitiveness.
The very demanding, often diametrically competing, interests of minority government have compounded Gillard's errors and problems. It is a fact of life that winning and hanging onto minority government involves enormous personal persuasion, charm and patience, and an almost endless capacity for compromise that disproportionately rewards those who make it all possible - the Independents and minor party members.
Gillard has, by virtue of her Government's 14-month survival, managed that thankless and electorally damaging task, with commitment and energy.
It seems doubtful if a minority Abbott government, which relied on the same combination of Independents and minor party members, would ever have fared so well. But we'll never know; Abbott didn't really get past first base in the initial negotiations.
The scenario with the greatest media currency at the moment is that even Gillard's closest supporters (factional leaders from Victoria, NSW and South Australia) who swung their support behind her when she deposed Kevin Rudd in June 2010, are willing to desert her.
The story goes on that they are rightly fearful of retribution from a reincarnated Rudd.
That is why they are putting up a straw-man candidate in Stephen Smith so that, ultimately, should a return to Rudd become inevitable, they will retain some bargaining power.
They don't really want Smith. And they certainly don't want Rudd (''I'd - take - it - you'd - love - me - to - sing?''). Or so the story goes ...
Which raises the question: why change? Especially when the focus seems to be shifting to Abbott and precisely what his government would look like and do.
It is becoming apparent that Abbott may not be able to destroy Gillard's Government and sail to a win at the election, a full two years away, on a series of negatives, not the least of which include repealing the carbon tax and the likely mining tax, and ceasing the National Broadband Network.
Abbott was overseas this week when the carbon tax was legislated. Given that his opposition to a carbon tax has been the cornerstone of his leadership, it was a very bad look.
Malcolm Turnbull was not, you couldn't help but notice, overseas.
Turnbull is operating in a unique political zone right now.
He is a Liberal, of course. But it is as if he is negotiating his parliamentary and public life as a Liberal Independent, such has been his capacity to state policy positions - and just plain common sense - outside his party's boundaries, all the while continuing to whack Labor and Gillard.
A day or two before the carbon tax vote, Turnbull was asked if climate change was real and how the sceptics justified themselves.
He gave an eloquent, plain-speaking explanation of the damage to the earth caused by greenhouse gases (Gillard/Greg Combet, take note) before addressing the sceptics.
'' ... it's like people who, you know, ignore the science, they're like the guy that gets told by his doctor to stop smoking, lose weight but decides not to do that because his mate down at the pub said his uncle Ernie lived to 95 and smoked a packet every day, you know. I mean, it's ridiculous.''
Abbott, of course, fits neatly into the sceptic camp.
On the pervasive negativity of the political status quo, meanwhile, Turnbull pointed out that while he thought the Gillard Government wasn't doing a very good job, ''the real problem that we have at the moment, the reason why politics is so tough, is that Parliament is very finely balanced, it's a hung Parliament so the Government could fall at any time.''
Oppositions, he said, were always criticised for being negative.
'' ... I'll tell you a story about [former South Australian premier] Mike Rann that he told me years ago. After he had been opposition leader for about six or seven years, he was listening to the radio one day and he thought, 'Who is this negative, carping person on the radio?' and then he realised it was him. The problem is, you see, it doesn't matter who the leader is but the Opposition's job is to criticise the Government so it will always be criticised for being negative.'' Rann? Abbott? You listening, Tony? See - he's on your side. Kinda, sorta.
There was significant disquiet in conservative ranks that Abbott was meeting his pre-arranged commitment to attend an International Democratic Union Party Leaders Meeting in London, while the National Party's Warren Truss, shadow climate change minister Greg Hunt, Joe Hockey and others were left to push his negative carbon tax message.
There is resentment and acute interest, too, in how Turnbull is managing to thrive in an atmosphere of such relentless Liberal-National negativity.
The parliamentary Liberals have managed to convince themselves that Gillard is irredeemable because the electorate ''hates'' her. Perhaps. But there is some reassessment of that view within Labor, no matter what purported ''insiders'' such as the rent-a-quote Graham Richardson might say.
The Liberals are deeply unsure, however, if voters could ever grow to like, let alone love, the negative Tony Abbott.
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