In January 2014, as he got down to the hard work of preparing his first budget, Joe Hockey told a colleague the year ahead would see the sun set on his "Sunrise Joe" persona.
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The new Treasurer grasped, acutely, the size of the task ahead.
Eighteen months later, Hockey's colleagues are talking about another gaffe this week from an accident prone Treasurer.
Some, remarkably, believe 2015 could be the year that the sun sets on Hockey's political career.
On the face of it, Hockey's advice to first home buyers looking to get into housing market was self-evidently correct, as some of his defenders in the party pointed out.
It was not as bad as his "poor people don't drive cars" comment, for example, but it was marked as another in a string of missteps.
"The starting point for a first home buyer is to get a good job that pays good money. If you've got a good job and it pays good money and you have security in relation to that job, then you can go to the bank and you can borrow money and that's readily affordable."
It was a slap in the face for people with good jobs – nurses, teachers, police officers – who are increasingly priced out of the market.
Pouring fuel on the fire, Hockey added that housing was still affordable because if it wasn't, "no one would be buying it".
As a wise Liberal MP - who is an ally of Hockey's - points out, the Treasurer's face during the media conference betrayed the exact moment he realised the insensitivity of his advice.
"He was thinking on his feet and he realised [what he had said]," the MP says.
Looking back at the video, it is possible to identify the exact moment when the ebullient Hockey's facial expression falls.
The lack of empathy in the remark from a man with a bulging property portfolio sparked a furious reaction.
And while Prime Minister Tony Abbott and other senior ministers leapt to the Treasurer's defence, Abbott's response was a text book example of how a well-paid politician should respond to housing affordability concerns.
"I'm someone who has, over the years, felt a bit of mortgage stress. Even as a cabinet minister, sometimes it's hard to pay a Sydney mortgage and I know over the years I've earned a lot more than the average person," he said.
Praising his chief economic salesman, Abbott added:"I'm just going to stress the fact that Joe has done the best possible thing by the home buyers of Australia through bringing down a Budget that will be good for jobs, that will be good for business, that will be good for confidence, because that's what we want".
By the end of the week, Hockey was in central western Queensland, opening a road bypass and talking about clouds and the drought with journalists in Longreach.
Back in Canberra, others were talking about whether the Prime Minister might actually punt his Treasurer over the latest in what has been a long lines of gaffes.
Liberal MPs in and outside of the cabinet doubt it.
One minister points out that Social Services Minister Scott Morrison and Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg were moved into economic portfolios in December's reshuffle for a good reason - to bolster the Coalition's firepower and its ability to explain its message.
The minister admitted Hockey's comments had taken the government off message but said "will it lead to anything? No. Should it? No."
One of the 39 MPs who voted for the spill in February heaped praise on Abbott's performance since his "near death experience". But the same was not true, he said, of Mr Hockey, who was effectively a dead weight.
"When Joe is on he is fantastic but when he is not, he is dreadful," the MP says.
"Treasurer is a job in which you have to be able to deal with not being liked - look at how Scott handled border security, he managed not being liked - but Joe can't handle it."
The MP says there is little to no prospect of Hockey being moved on, which has longer term implications for the Coalition's reform agenda.
"I would hope we are taking significant reforms to the next election but to do that, we need significant political capital and a good salesman to sell it."
After pre-budget suggestions that Morrison was emerging as the government's chief economic salesman, Hockey became re-energised and backbench MPs had a spring in their step, believing they had a politically-saleable document to spruik in their electorates.
This week's gaffe has led to a collective groan from the backbench.
But the prospect of a re-shuffle that moved Hockey on seemed "very unlikely", one minister said, despite his "loose language", because Abbott was joined at the hip to his Treasurer.
In addition, the Prime Minister would be mindful that such a move "could precipitate other things", a reference to leadership tensions that have largely gone off the boil since February.
But clear political battle lines are emerging on housing affordability, a perennial political hot potato in Australia, particularly in Sydney and parts of Melbourne. Sydney property prices, for example, grew by 12.4 per cent in 2014 while Melbourne's grew by 7.6 per cent, according to the CoreLogic RP Data home value index.
The shortage of affordable housing is being driven by record low interest rates, surging offshore demand, a lack of supply and investors getting very low returns in other asset classes, while suppressed wages growth is compounding the problem.
In addition, negative gearing and capital gains tax regimes that investors can take advantage has also played a part, and has driven a surge in investors getting in to the property market since 2000.
In fact, there are now close to 1.3 million people in Australia taking advantage of negative gearing, and the 50 per cent discount on the capital gain obtained from selling a property is very attractive lurk, too.
Figures released this week underscore the growth of would-be investors in the housing market, with that cohort now accounting for 51.6 per cent of the money borrowed for home loans in April, and owner-occupiers accounting for the remaining 48.4 per cent.
Grattan Institute chief executive John Daley told Lateline this week that the "shift in wealth towards an older generation is effectively also resulting in a shift away from young people owning houses to occupy them, towards an older generation owning houses to rent them back to that younger generation."
Daley added that "the really big lever, as indeed the Treasurer himself suggested this morning, is around the supply of housing".
Fairfax Media spoke to half a dozen of the nation's most respected economists working for banks, think tanks, and financial institutions about the accuracy of Treasurer's "get a good job" comments.
None were willing to discuss the Treasurer's comments but privately, most were critical.
As one put it, speaking for many, "Joe is a lovely guy but I'm not sure he gets it. He used to be an effective retail politician too," another said, adding that he "now appears to lack credibility with his colleagues."
All agreed with Daley that housing supply was a key issue and backed the Treasurer on this point
Labor is now looking closely at a McKell Institute proposal that would see existing negative gearing arrangements grandfathered, but further negative gearing limited to new properties in a move designed to drive the creation of new housing stock ,and which would potentially save the budget as much as $29 billion over a decade.
Capital gains tax, which interacts closely with negative gearing, is also in the opposition's sights.
Leaving open changes to both is politically risky for Labor and the Coalition will not countenance change to the system.
But it also demonstrates the opposition has calculated that with a politically weakened Treasurer, an opportunity exists to prosecute a difficult reform case.
The Prime Minister smelled a political opportunity and pounced, warning against Labor "mucking around" with the system.
Abbott believes he has Bill Shorten's measure and recent political polling demonstrates he may well be right.
Hockey deserves some credit for that as the restoration of the government's fortunes has been in part a result of his second budget.
But if the Treasurer keeps carelessly stepping on political land mines, his colleagues will keep talking about his suitability for the job.
As much as Sunrise Joe is still well-liked by his colleagues, no politician has an inexhaustible supply of political capital.
