Is Tony Abbott's post-leadership decompensation entering its final stage where the real harm is to his own legacy?
If so, Abbott's capacity to damage Malcolm Turnbull may already have peaked. Consider the trajectory.
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'People aren't happy': Abbott
Former prime minister Tony Abbott delivers a stinging assessment of Malcolm Turnbull saying things are going so badly for the government, Bill Shorten could soon be in the lodge.
In the months after his removal, red-hot anger over Abbott's referral of too much power to chief of staff Peta Credlin was mixed with personal compassion.
Despite promising he would not snipe or undermine Turnbull's leadership, Abbott was granted a period of grace by "the colleagues". It was accepted that as a former prime minister, Abbott had a unique right to "correct" the record as he saw it, and a very human right to be angry.
Doubtless, there was a component of collective guilt in this latitude, with Coalitionists carrying a nagging sense that in cutting down a sitting PM, a line had been crossed towards moral decline.
In those days, Abbott was relatively circumspect, and public outbursts were played down in the hope that they would eventually taper off.
But the betrayed leader's anger has not abated and his behaviour is now the chief destroyer of remaining goodwill within the Coalition.
Far from protecting the reputation of his two-year premiership, the erstwhile PM is trashing it, contradicting his own past statements, and demonstrating that revenge for a career thwarted trumps his pious pursuit of what's best for the party.
One conservative figure cited Abbott's deliberate use of "mayhem" to destroy Turnbull. Right-wing figures once loyal to Abbott are furious, with the conservative twin towers of Peter Dutton and Mathias Cormann moving ever closer to Turnbull.
Increasingly desperate, Abbott has been arguing furiously in recent days against the "magic pudding" clean energy target favoured by Turnbull as per the Finkel Review – depicting it as a tax on coal.
Even renewable energy and emissions reduction benchmarks he championed in office have been criticised.
One colleague said his behaviour was fast isolating the former leader, while exposing his prime ministership as an "absolute farce".
While the carbon-pricing debate remains perilous for Turnbull, Abbott's overreach may end up driving climate recalcitrants towards a compromise lest they be seen to give succour to his antics.
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