In an attempt to maintain unity, the PM extracted an agreement that the government would be given a clear ride until the release of this year's budget, with its success being the last chance for Abbott to shore up his leadership. We've already looked at this a bit - Hockey's already foreshadowed that there'll be a plea to raise the GST, which will absolutely not be agreed to by the states for reasons both partisan and otherwise, and that leaves a remarkably narrow window for the budget to wriggle through. So, let's do some speculation. What's at stake right at the moment and who, exactly, are the government going to attempt to please - and, by extension, infuriate? Option one: Cutageddon 2015!

Of course, they're only in trouble if the ATO investigate 'em. One way to avoid that might be to impose institutional staff cuts so everyone's worried for their job and also too flat out to start any complicated, expensive investigations. As it happens, that's happening too. Probably a coincidence, of course. Option two: a budget that doesn't actively punch the country in its national gonads The problem with presenting a harsh budget that gives companies a free run is that it's already been tried. And it didn't work. Indeed, it's what got the government into the exciting mess from which it's currently attempting to extricate itself. For one thing, the public thought the last budget was horribly unfair. More problematically, so did the crossbench of the Senate who promptly blocked just about all of the so-called reforms, despite that crossbench consisting almost entirely of social and economic conservatives that would, under normal circumstances, seem like the sorts of people with which it would be a slam-dunk for the government to negotiate. Also, a government that sweeps into power with a significant victory - like the Abbott government did - has a ticking timebomb at its heart. That bomb is called "the backbench".

Many of those MPs know that the only reason they get to hang out in Canberra so often at the moment is entirey because they happened to be the warm body the party stuck in an electorate at a moment when swinging voters decided that they didn't like Kevin Rudd. And those people see tough budgets and cuts to services, and then see themselves having to go back to a proper job in the real world. And that scares the heck out of them. And as it happens, the GST is a particularly thorny branch that Hockey's left himself no option but to grasp. Go west! One longtime issue for WA generally and the State government and local federal backbenchers in particular has been the feeling that its received a raw deal in terms of the percentage of GST allocated to the state.