Why? Abbott has done a powerfully effective job of highlighting Gillard as the problem, and in promising to cancel her out. He has offered himself as the human boot to stamp on the face of the Prime Minister. But it seems that Australians don't want to be led by an angry boot. The polls are telling us that as much as Australia would like to be rid of Gillard, it is loath to replace her with Abbott. The Herald's pollster, Nielsen's John Stirton, says that of the 19 opposition leaderships measured in the Nielsen poll over the past 39 years, Abbott's average net approval ranks him the ninth most popular. In other words, he's in the historical midfield. Not too bad, surely? The sting, however, is that Abbott is also one of the 11 who rated a negative average net approval rating. And none of the other 10 ever made it to the prime ministership. This does not destine Abbott to the same outcome but it does flag that he has a real problem. The Abbott approach of angry oppositionism has reached a point of diminishing returns. Three developments this week further demonstrate its limits: the passage of the mining tax, the events in the Coalition party room, and Labor's increased margin in the House through the change in Speaker. First, the government managed to get its mining tax passed by the House of Representatives, in spite of Abbott's huffing and puffing and angry bluster. This is the chamber where the Coalition's power is at its greatest. The bill's passage through the Senate early next year seems assured. It would then become law.

The mining tax is a prime example of the way the Coalition's eagerness to say "no" has led it to rush into silly positions. The Coalition leadership first decided to oppose the mining tax even while the details were still under wraps, with reporters digesting the details in the government's media "lock-up". The mining tax is poorly designed. It is not ideal. But the tax on mining is the only tool now in prospect for Australia to manage the mining boom. The boom, by elevating the Australian dollar, is hammering the competitiveness of every other export sector and every import-competing sector in Australia. Manufacturing, higher education and tourism, for instance, are suffering. Through this "Dutch disease" or "resource curse" effect, mining exerts a brutal force on the rest of the economy. It's a vast convulsive force that makes the carbon tax look trivial in scale by comparison. It's unwise and probably impossible to try to stop the boom, as the Reserve Bank's governor, Glenn Stevens, has said. And it would be a serious mistake to re-regulate the floating dollar, which has served as the principal shock-absorber for Australia's economy. So all that's left is to try to manage the boom. The mining tax is also inadequate - raising $11 billion over three years for redistribution to the rest of the economy by making a minor cut to the company tax rate, giving small business a tax benefit and enabling higher compulsory superannuation contributions is an extremely modest redress.

Yet it is the only tool on offer. The mining industry fought ferociously against the tax as first proposed by the Rudd government, then acquiesced in a negotiated bonsai version, the one that is now passing through the Parliament. Despite its flaws, the tax is not only economically rational as a tax on the super-profits of a finite public resource but it is also politically popular. An intelligent approach for the Coalition would have been to work to improve the design of the tax. Instead, it rushed heedlessly to oppose it, latching onto metaphors like "you can't kill the goose that lays the golden egg". One senior official turned this around: "The mining industry is the goose that's stealing the golden egg." When the Coalition realised that its position had led it to oppose higher superannuation savings for millions of Australians - gulp! - it had to execute an inelegant quasi-backflip. It announced that it would scrap the tax but keep the superannuation increases that the tax is enabling, leaving no way to pay for it. Over-eager oppositionism, amended by populism. Silliness becomes farce. And when members of his own party confronted Abbott over this in the Coalition party room this week, he grew angry and shut down the debate. But the most potent political problem for the Coalition here is that the tax is now becoming law regardless. It joins another trademark of the Gillard legislative program, the carbon tax, in passing into law, exposing Abbott's impotence. How many times can he huff and puff without ever blowing the house down? Second is the evidence in the Coalition party room this week that the Liberals' own polling is discovering the cost of Abbott's strategy to just say no. The deputy leader, Julie Bishop, took the unusual step of pointing out to the Coalition meeting that it had agreed to government policy recently in three different areas.

The party, she said, had supported the government commitment to a regional trade proposal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, its decision to sell uranium to India and its decision to bring a rotating deployment of US Marines to Australia. And Abbott himself told the party that his speech to the Sydney Institute on Monday reflected the "positive agenda" of an Abbott government. Abbott likened it to a John Howard "headland" speech. Abbott's speech was, nonetheless, overwhelmingly a tirade against Labor. If he wanted to deliver a real speech about what the party stood for, rather than against, it would look more like the maiden speech this week by the new senator for NSW, Arthur Sinodinos, John Howard's long-time chief of staff. But the unprompted comments from Bishop and Abbott about the opposition's positiveness tell us that Liberal research is turning up the same thing that Labor's research is finding - that the overwhelming public impression of Abbott is of a naysayer. He is gifted at finding problems, but no use at finding solutions. So it was no coincidence that Labor produced a glossy 14-page colour booklet this week to ram the point home. It stars Abbott on the cover and bears the title: "The Little Book of No." It also carries a cover quote of Abbott's: "If in doubt our job is to oppose."

Third, Labor's coup with the Speaker in the House this week has entrenched Gillard in power. Her minority government has become a little less minority and a little more government. By resigning as speaker and rejoining the bloc of Labor votes in the chamber, Harry Jenkins created a vacancy in the speakership. The government quickly filled it by nominating a Liberal turncoat, Peter Slipper. This has the effect of cutting the Coalition's numbers by one, and increasing Labor's by one, widening Gillard's margin in the House from one vote to three. This gives the government a crucial extra life to survive the loss of a seat by death, misadventure or politics. The lightning coup looks suspicious. Without any obvious compelling reason, Jenkins has awarded himself a 43 per cent pay cut, sacrificing $106,000 a year, and volunteered to cut his life pension by at least $13,000 a year. And this, he said, because he wanted to rejoin the world of policy as a backbencher. In NSW this is the sort of deal that could be referred to the Independent Commission Against Corruption. There is no federal ICAC, however. Labor insists Jenkins resigned of his own accord. Abbott's reflex response was to mount a censure motion in the House. A censure motion is the most serious rebuke that a Parliament can wield. If carried, it has the power to force a government from office. But like his overall strategy, Abbott has overused this to the point of diminishing returns.

It was Abbott's 34th attempt to bring a censure motion against this government. And for the 34th time, it failed. Gillard is increasingly likely to be able to run the full term of Parliament, meaning almost two years more. Abbott has ridden his horse of populist anger to exhaustion. A smart leader would spend the Christmas break thinking hard about how to look more like a credible alternative. Peter Hartcher is the political editor.