That question must surely be doing the rounds given his lacklustre performance since taking on the top job in February, and the relentless push by Barnaby Joyce to rehabilitate himself with the party's rural base.

Following the release of his new book, the man once described by Tony Abbott as "Australia's best retail politician" embarked on a media blitz to announce he was back, he cared about the battlers in the bush and that he had strong ideas on how to improve their lot.

That is not a message country voters have heard from Mr McCormack, or other senior Nationals, in recent times. It is the Prime Minister who has taken the lead in selling the Government's drought relief program to the media.

Mr Joyce's recent media adventures are reminiscent of the high profile he adopted ahead of his elevation to the Nationals leadership following the departure of Warren Truss.

A casual observer listening to the radio ahead of the Coalition MPs' meeting on the NEG on Tuesday could have been forgiven for thinking the member for the Riverina had already abdicated and that Mr Joyce, who pointedly refused to rule out the possibility of a comeback when he stepped down, was already back at the helm.

Mr Joyce did an extended doorstop in which he said pensioners in his electorate were going to bed early because they couldn't afford their power bills and it was no use telling them to lay there and think of the Paris Agreement.

People in the bush are doing it hard. Remarks like these will resonate with many. That alone is sufficient to make Mr McCormack's colleagues sit up and take notice given his best effort to date on the NEG has been an uninspired piece of fence sitting.

While declaring himself to be "pro-coal", Mr McCormack warned his MPs in July not to demand funding for coal-fired power stations on the basis it could threaten the deal with the States.

"We don't want to blow this up by playing politics," he said. "I don't want the NEG to be killed off."

Mr McCormack's greatest virtue is he has not upset the PM or done and said anything that would get under the skins of the twitterati and the commentariat.

His greatest fault is he has done little or nothing to boost the Nationals' vote at what is expected to be an extremely tight Federal election either later this year or in 2019.

That is a dangerous position to be in given Mr Joyce seems well down the road towards political rehabilitation amongst hard core Nationals supporters.

What Canberrans and metropolitan voters forget is they have no say on the Nationals' leadership or who the Deputy Prime Minister in a Coalition Government will be.

If Mr Joyce can sell himself as the comeback kid the implications for the Turnbull Government would be dire.

The Prime Minister would find himself saddled with a high profile, and volatile, deputy who he was publicly at war with less than eight months ago.

That would be catastrophic going into a make or break election.