Senior Turnbull government figures are trying to peel back the number of government MPs crossing the floor on the national energy guarantee, attempting to minimise any blow up that could imperil the prime minister’s leadership.

Talks are underway in an effort to see whether any assurances can be given to some of the dissenters on policy measures additional to the Neg that would reduce electricity prices. But the government is on thin ice with any undertakings, with the Labor states yet to give their backing to the policy.

It comes as former prime minister Tony Abbott continued to campaign against the policy on Wednesday and suggested it should be taken “back to the drawing board”.

Government MPs are pointing to the junior Nationals frontbencher Keith Pitt, who met the prime minister this week and, according to some sources, is telling colleagues he can not support the policy and is prepared to relinquish his front bench spot. Guardian Australia has made numerous attempts to confirm these accounts from several sources with the MP directly, but he has not returned calls.

Given the majority of the Coalition party room cleared the policy this week, the government has now given notice of its intention to introduce the legislation giving effect to the emissions reduction components of the scheme, but it is not clear when the bill will be brought on for debate.

With up to 10 government MPs threatening to cross the floor on the bill, the government’s legislation will not clear the House of Representatives without Labor’s backing, which increases the degree of political risk for the government.

Abbott continued to agitate publicly against the policy on Wednesday, highlighting the government’s reliance on cooperation from Labor. “The essential difference between the prime minister and myself is I don’t want us to support Labor’s emissions policy.”

Abbott said with possibly 10 government MPs threatening to cross the floor, the only means Malcolm Turnbull had of getting legislation through the House was with Labor’s backing, and he said the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, had also spent months “begging” the Labor states for their approval.

“I am naturally suspicious of any policy that requires the support of Labor, because it’s Labor that has the worst case of emissions obsession,” Abbott told radio station 2GB.

Abbott said given the internal opposition, Turnbull and Frydenberg should take the policy back to the drawing board. He declared the first duty of the party leader was to keep the party together.

“Certainly in John Howard’s time, a submission from a minister that got the kind of treatment that minister Frydenberg’s submission got yesterday, it would go back to the drawing board, because the first duty of the leader is to keep the party together.”

While business groups, energy industry stakeholders and a range of other interest groups have called on the major parties to lay down the cudgels in the interest of ending a decade of partisan warfare, Abbott declared the Liberals should be “fighting the Labor party, not fighting ourselves”.

“At the moment, thanks to this so-called national energy guarantee – the fight is an internal fight.”

On Sky News, Abbott’s former chief of staff and now media commentator Peta Credlin interrogated the New South Wales conservative Liberal, Jim Molan, who is not one of the group threatening to cross the floor, even though he describes the Neg as “suboptimal”.

Credlin – who has been editorialising against the policy consistently as the government’s internal process has hit crunch point – pressed Molan on why he would support a policy that would legislate the Paris commitments her former boss made before he lost the leadership to Turnbull.

Molan struggled to answer.