Tony Abbott 'determined to do better' after spill motion defeated – politics live

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Well kids I reckon it’s time to call it an evening. Mr Bowers and I have been pounding the pavements and the keyboard since pre-dawn and we want to remain speaking English more or less coherently for the remainder of the week.

Here’s the summary.

• Tony Abbott survived a spill motion 16 months into his prime ministership.
• He then asked his colleagues to give him six months to reset the government. Unpopular policies are hitting the fence, so it’s hard to know how the budget will eventually add up but that, folks, is a problem for tomorrow or the day after that. Abbott says his office will change, and the government’s internal processes will change and good government will begin from today. Hubris was replaced by humility, in the undertakings at least.
• The resolution of the spill motion creates the perfect conditions for a more serious push against Abbott’s leadership. But that will require the various protagonists to actually fight for the job, and the factional groups to agree on the best candidate.
  
• Bill Shorten moved quickly to try and muddy the waters for Malcolm Turnbull – the flip-flopper who wouldn’t even break cover to take the job he’s always prized. Shorten’s message to bruised Coalition MPs was he’s not one of you people – you can’t trust him.

There it was. See youse on the morrows.

Political blogger Paula Matthewson is very good on The Drum today.

Today’s vote has undoubtedly winged the PM. He may well be given a chance to recover, with the option of putting him out of his misery later if that is necessary. But now there is blood in the water, an off-the-radar battle is taking place between the right-wing conservatives who want to protect the government’s current agenda and the moderates who seek to change it. This battle is also the reason there’s no clear alternative to Abbott in the leadership stakes. The conservatives have been grooming former immigration minister Scott Morrison as their Plan B, in the event that Abbott fell under a bus. But without experience in an economic portfolio, Morrison is not yet ready for the top job.

Meantime, communications minister Malcolm Turnbull has played the long-game, managing to keep moderate voters onside despite his spruiking of the Coalition’s technologically sub-optimal broadband network and keeping schtum on climate change. Deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop has the potential to be a compromise candidate, with Liberal voters preferring her over Turnbull, but is not (yet) considered competent enough by the right, who still have the numbers. Accordingly, there will be no change to the Liberal leadership until the right accept the government is electorally doomed under Abbott, and that some policy purity will have to surrendered to maintain a fighting chance at the next election.

While this subterranean battle escalates between the conservatives and the moderates in the Liberal party, the PM and his supporters will attempt to draw a line under recent events as nothing more than an ill-judged dummy-spit by a unrepresentative minority. However judging by the size of the anti-Abbott vote, and the PM’s track record in failing to live up to his word, the rebellion is far from over.

Take a bow, Bernard Keane, of Crikey. There were many bizarre elements in the bunker broadcast in the wake of kill spill, but the glance the prime minister threw off camera at the end was perhaps most unnerving of all.

Slightly intimidated by the thread today folks – HUGE conversation down there – don’t know where to start. Did start, briefly. Good to have so many folks with us today.

Ah yes the GP copayment – did forget that sorry. Well, the copayment has gone in the course of today from off, to on, to being whatever the doctors will cop.

A quick stocktake after question time. Tell me if I missed something.

1. Tony Abbott is punching on with lines that you can’t look at too closely because they really aren’t that helpful.
2. Malcolm Turnbull is looking remarkably chilled for someone who didn’t get an opening to stand as Liberal leader today.
3. Bill Shorten’s immediate objective is try and take out Turnbull before the leadership dynamic develops its sea legs.
4. Other colleagues inside the Liberal party will be happy to help Shorten with that objective.
   

Tony and Malcolm went to question time, by Mike Bowers.

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Much Twitter chatter today about the prime minister’s chief of staff being absent from the adviser’s box.

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Not that exercised myself, but for the record – advisers box. No Credlin.

There’s the vote now. It won’t succeed – the government has the numbers.

That is one of the more fascinating 40 minutes that you’ll ever see in politics. Hand-to-hand combat. Messing with each other’s minds.

Abbott, punching until the knuckles bleed:

It wasn’t just the fiscal ineptitude, it was the utter administrative incompetence of members opposite. They spent $2.5bn putting pink batts into peoples’ roofs, that killed people and then they spent the money pulling them out. They spent more than $17bn on overpriced school halls. They promised to spend $43bn on a National Broadband Network that was going nowhere fast. Thanks to the stewardship of the member for Wentworth, the minister for communications, finally, the National Broadband Network is rolling out affordably, on budget and on a revised timetable. This is a government which is getting on with the job for which it was elected.

The leader of the opposition says what about getting on with building the submarines? The leader of the opposition’s contribution to the submarine debate was to go out there and engage in cheap racist ranting against the people of Japan. Just like he engaged in cheap, xenophobic ranting against foreign workers with his ant 457 campaign when he was in government just a few years ago.