The time-honoured political tradition of blaming your predecessors and the media for any early missteps will only get you so far, writes Mungo MacCallum.

There is an old story about a newly elected prime minister arriving at The Lodge to be greeted by his defeated predecessor.

After exchanging pleasantries, the departing PM tells the newcomer that he has left him an invaluable gift - three sealed envelopes in the top drawer of the desk in the study, to be used in times of crisis. When the first crisis hits, open the envelope marked #1; for the second, the envelope marked #2; and for the third, the remaining envelope, #3.

The new prime minister offers his thanks for the advice, and thinks no more about it; but in time he is indeed caught up in a political crisis, and his mind goes back to the envelopes. He opens #1 and reads the instruction: "Blame your predecessors." Relieved, he does so, insisting that they had left him with the problem, and while his government was doing its best to solve it, it was not, after all, of his making. And it works; delighted, he goes on with business as usual - until the second crisis erupts.

Again, he goes to the study desk and opens the envelope #2. This time the instruction is: "Blame the media." So he claims the media are engaged in a savage vendetta against him, inventing stories and ignoring the real progress his government is making. And again, it works, so slightly frazzled he presses on until, inevitably, there is a third crisis.

He strides confidently to the desk and opens the last envelope, only to read the final instruction: "Prepare three envelopes."

An oldie but a goodie, and one Tony Abbott may well be contemplating with some apprehension over the Christmas break; because, in the first hectic 100 days of his government, he has already used up the first two envelopes - and, if the polls are to be believed, not to any great effect.

Blaming one's predecessors is, of course, a tried and true tactic for any incoming government which finds, on assuming office, that its pre-election promises have been just a touch on the generous side; the belated discovery of the fiscal black hole had become almost a cliché. And this is the problem: it is no longer entirely believable. We already know the previous lot have, to a certain extent, stuffed up the economy; that's why we voted them out. And we voted the new lot in not to whinge about it, but to fix things.

The idea that the cupboard is bare is no longer tenable excuse - especially when the new Treasurer settles into office by tossing a casual $8.8 billion to the Reserve Bank, junking $3 billion worth of Labor's taxes and then demanding that the debt ceiling be raised by another $200 billion before settling for having it wiped out altogether. In the circumstances, complaining that the old guard had been a bit loose with the purse strings is unlikely to evoke much sympathy.

Blaming Labor for being stubborn in opposition is almost certainly equally futile while memories of Abbott's own very recent intransigence are still relatively fresh; Mr Negativity can hardly object if his own opposition counterparts sometimes say no. And while it is true that a majority of Australians would probably like to see the carbon tax abolished, there is absolutely no enthusiasm for Abbott's proposed alternative in so-called Direct Action. In spite of the baying from the hounds of the Murdoch press, Labor leader Bill Shorten is unlikely to lose much ground by sticking to his party's pre-election position.

And most recently, we had Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull informing us that Labor had left the NBN in such a shemozzle that he was now forced to downgrade it yet again. Turnbull's original version of NBN Lite had not exactly been a hit with the computer nerds; this new emasculation was seen as making the whole project pointless. Justly or not, the blame for the destruction of fast national broadband will be laid on Abbott and Turnbull, not on Labor.

So envelope #1, if not a complete failure, has so far failed to deliver. There may be some blood still to be extracted from the stone: Abbott and his colleagues will not willingly let Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd lie quietly in their political graves. But all the signs are that the punters, having heard it all before and having taken their own revenge at the ballot box, are now ready to put their baseball bats away until the next time around.

So how about envelope #2: blame the media? Well, that has yielded at best mixed results. Abbott first tried it when he was attempting to defuse the row with Indonesia resulting from the revelation that Australia had tapped the personal phones of the country's president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and his wife: he really regretted, Abbott averred solemnly, that the reports had appeared in the public media. Unsurprisingly the Indonesians were not impressed, but Abbott gained some local support when he turned his attack more specifically towards the ABC; once again the Murdoch press weighed in with all guns blazing.

But it did not solve the problem, and in fact there has been a counter reaction from many quarters against Abbott and his ministers for being too secretive, too unwilling to talk to the media; in particular the decision of the Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison, to invest his portfolio with the kind of military security more normally associated with the Manhattan Project has evoked both resentment and derision.

But the real clincher came with the Government's double backflip with pike and tuck (degree of difficulty 4.2) on the Gonski reforms. Once again Abbott and his Education Minister Christopher Pyne chose to shoot the messenger: the government was actually keeping its promises, the problem was that the media and the public had misunderstood them. They didn't actually mean what everyone had thought they meant. In any event, that particular porky did not fly, and the Government was forced into another expensive bail out.

And so the pattern continued. Obviously it is not time for envelope #3 just yet. There is the opportunity for a new start after the holiday break and a very long time until the next election. But there is no doubt that Abbott and his colleagues have used up a lot of their political cred for little reward, and they wouldn't want to make a habit of it.

That's what happens when you run what was perhaps the most successful opposition in recent history: you think all you have to do is repeat the formula in government. But it doesn't work that way: the doors that used to push open so easily are now clearly marked pull. If Abbott does not read that warning sign quickly, he may become a political joke of his own.

Mungo MacCallum is a political journalist and commentator. View his full profile here.