WHEN a television reporter confronted him on February 8th over a remark about the death of an Australian soldier in Afghanistan, Tony Abbott, Australia's opposition leader, fell strangely silent. Channel Seven, a commercial network, had used freedom-of-information laws to obtain footage from defence authorities. It showed Mr Abbott being briefed in Afghanistan last October about Lance-Corporal Jared MacKinney, who died in battle with the Taliban the previous month. On hearing the story, Mr Abbott told Colonel James Creighton, the American commander of the Australian troops: “It's pretty obvious that, well, sometimes shit happens, doesn't it?”

Mr Abbott is one of Australia's most combative political figures. When he was initially confronted with this footage, he accused the reporter, Mark Riley, of taking his remark out of context. Pressed to explain himself further, Mr Abbott seemed flustered. He stared Mr Riley down, nodded his head agitatedly and said nothing for about 20 seconds—then abruptly ended the interview. This “Abbott moment” has come to seem like a greater liability for him than anything he actually said in Afghanistan. Channel Seven's portrayal of the video in its news broadcast has provoked a rage of its own: were they to have shown the full context of Mr Abbott's briefing indeed he would not have seemed so insensitive about the soldier's death. But more questions have been raised since about Mr Abbott's own handling of the affair. For a leader of the conservative Liberal party he shows not only a poor choice of words in Afghanistan, but also a spectacular failure to explain himself on television to voters at home.

The “shit happens” affair coincided with the start of Australia's parliamentary year. Soon afterwards, there were leaks about disunity in Mr Abbott's political ranks, over his proposals to cut spending on reconstruction work after the recent flood and cyclone damage in Queensland. Mr Abbott opposes a plan put forward by Julia Gillard, the prime minister, to raise a special levy from taxpayers to pay for the damage. He prefers to cut aid that would help Indonesia build more government schools as alternatives to extremist Islamic schools, among other programmes.

Then came an even more damaging leak. On February 17th the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Scott Morrison, the opposition's spokesman on immigration, had urged his colleagues to exploit voters' anxieties about “Muslim immigration”. Mr Abbott tried to brush off the report but the inevitable controversy has further divided his parliamentarians. This coincides with the government's decision to define multiculturalism as a centrepiece of immigration policy.

All this has helped to give Ms Gillard her best week yet since scraping to power last August at the head of a minority Labor government. She tends to perform her best with parliament in session; its resumption comes with good timing for her. And on February 13th, she secured agreement from Australia's state governments for a revamped plan to reform hospital funding. But an opinion poll released the next day suggested she is still struggling to restore voters' confidence in the government. Labor's first vote was a perilous 32%. After distribution of second votes, Labor trailed the opposition by 8%.

Labor's poor showing federally might in part reflect the party's crisis in New South Wales, the most populous state. After 16 years in power, a deeply unpopular Labor government there faces an election on March 26th; opinion polls suggest the opposition Liberals will sweep it from office. But the fortunes of the two national leaders slightly muddy the federal polls further. Australians have not really warmed to either Ms Gillard or Mr Abbott. Though she is hardly beloved, Ms Gillard still holds a 10-point lead as preferred prime minister and the number of voters who disapprove of Mr Abbott's performance as opposition leader outstrips those who approve.

The gap is widest (46% to 38%) in a poll by Essential Media Communications, a research company. Peter Lewis, a director at Essential Media, reckons this bodes badly for Mr Abbott's survival as Liberal leader. Mr Abbott, he says, is entering “the political twilight zone of disapproval from which some never return”. With his Afghanistan remark, Mr Abbott has at least managed to end the taboo on using a certain expletive in Australian broadsheets' headlines. Despite his side's healthy polling numbers he has much work ahead to avoid shit's happening to him.