With a cabinet better suited to fighting the culture wars than dealing with reality, Tony Abbott has given us insight into his particular brand of conservative malaise, writes Tim Dunlop.

Let's at least do Tony Abbott the courtesy of accepting that he knows what he is doing. Choosing a cabinet is not a dad moment. He didn't just happen to come up with the particular mix of jobs and gender that he did earlier this week on a whim. He has been planning it for some time.

So, as we know: one woman.

With no-hopers like Peter Dutton in the cabinet and the likes of, say, Kelly O'Dwyer outside it, it is impossible to maintain that merit had anything do with the selection process.

This is as near as damn it to the living embodiment of jobs-for-the-boys as you're likely to see in a major institution this side of the twentieth century. It represents a value judgement by our new prime minister, a clear indication that he simply cannot accept women as equals and can only relate to them - as per his constant parading of his family - as wives, mothers and daughters.

He can no longer hide on this.

So his one-woman cabinet is an appalling outcome, but it will also be his downfall because his own party will not stand for it. Women on the conservative side of politics simply cannot afford the snub and, although the fresh glow of incumbency will hold them at bay for a while, they will eventually find a way to respond. (Some of them may even be regretting their complicity and silence in the attacks on Julia Gillard: their own personal Pastor Niemoller moment.)

The new cabinet is Tony Abbott's secrets revealed. In fact, it goes deeper than just Abbott: it is indicative of the pathologies of a certain brand of conservatism.

As a philosophy, conservatism has much to recommend it. The desire to preserve what is good about the past - whether it be the natural world or the social mores and institutional arrangements that have served us well - is a laudable instinct that transcends arbitrary left/right political distinctions.

But Abbott's conservatism - a strain dominant in the western world at the moment - is far more reactionary than this. It is built on resentment, the resentment that comes from a perceived loss of prestige.

The anger of certain men at rising gender equality is this resentment's most obvious manifestation, and we can expect that those who jeered at Julia Gillard will be the same ones cheering, or rationalising, Tony Abbott's one-woman cabinet.

But other aspects of the new cabinet reveal a more general conservative malaise.

Thus, we now have no science minister, and this is as one with the general tenor of the sort of dumbed-down conservatism to which Mr Abbott adheres. Science comes under particular attack, because it is the great dethroner of religious power.

Conservatives' problems in this area are partly to do with gender - as the major religions are all patriarchies - but it goes further than that. Science prioritises fact over authority, chance over planning, and description over prescription. As we have seen in the US for a number of years, this all sends a particular sort of conservative spare, and Tony Abbott is one of their number.

Their particular bugbears are evolution and the science of climate change, and so it is no surprise that the new cabinet no longer has a minister for climate change, or that the science portfolio, originally introduced into Australian cabinets in 1931, is being watered down with industry and education. (And don't be at all surprised to see a push for "intelligent design" to be included in school curriculums.)

There are other indications of the mindset.

The creation of a ministry for border protection is undoubtedly about signalling Tony Abbott's priorities in the area. It is therefore hard to see the exclusion or relegation of ministries devoted to innovation, homelessness, women, youth, workplace relations, mental health, ageing, multiculturalism, childcare and international development as anything other than a similar statement of priorities.

Of course, he is perfectly entitled to construct his cabinet as he sees fit; it's just that we should see it for it is.

The choices he has made point to a deep unseriousness and immaturity at the centre of the Abbott Government, as well as amongst those sources of power within our society - including within the media - that support him. For all of them, it is more important to raise a middle finger to what they see as their "enemies" than it is to govern in reality. They would rather score points against the "feminazis" and "poofs" and "inner-city elites" and all the other figments of their arrested development than face up to the world as it actually exists.

This is a problem for all of us, because we simply cannot, as a nation, thrive in the world when a significant portion of those in power are in denial about reality, whether it be the facts of climate change, the worth of women, or the ethnic composition of our population.

Yes, the Coalition won the election quite comfortably, but not nearly as well as they thought they would. The result showed that a lot of the dissatisfaction with Labor went not to Mr Abbott but to minor parties and independents. The electorate is fractious and completely dissatisfied with both major parties, and they are unlikely to want to indulge a new prime minister and the chips on his shoulder for too long.

Tony Abbott is more conservative and more of a culture warrior than the nation he now leads. He has set himself up for a reckoning, including from within his own party, and I don't think it will take too long to manifest.

Still, a lot of damage can be done in the meantime, and it is important that people understand that.

Tim Dunlop is the author of The New Front Page: New Media and the Rise of the Audience. He writes regularly for The Drum and a number of other publications. You can follow him on Twitter. View his full profile here.