Political editor Mal Farr says Tony Abbott will struggle to stay as PM, given that two-thirds of Coalition backbenchers want him out.

THE date was Monday, February 27, 2012, and then-Opposition leader Tony Abbott rose in parliament to ask a question of Prime Minister Julia Gillard that will no doubt come back to haunt him in the coming days.

“My question is to the Prime Minister,” he said. “Given that one-third of her parliamentary colleagues and a quarter of her cabinet colleagues have today expressed their lack of confidence in her, how can she claim to have a mandate to continue as Prime Minister?”

The question came after Ms Gillard faced down her first challenge from former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

The 2012 spill was forced when Rudd quit his post as Foreign Minister, claiming he no longer felt that Ms Gillard had confidence in him.

Gillard immediately challenged Rudd to bring it on, declaring the leadership vacant before embarking on a vicious, public take-down of Kevin Rudd’s time as Prime Minister.

Ms Gillard won the ballot 71 votes to 31.

This morning, the PM narrowly avoided having to vacate his own leadership after a spill motion was moved by disgruntled WA backbencher Luke Simpkins, but the result was even worse for Abbott than the one faced by Gillard in 2012.

Today’s motion was defeated 61 votes to 39 with one MP voting informally — a vote of no confidence from almost 40% of the Prime Minister’s own caucus.

Mr Abbott’s position is even worse when you take into account the Westminster convention of cabinet solidarity, which theoretically prevented most of his cabinet from voting for the spill motion.

If we assume that all of the Liberal frontbench stuck to the convention and voted against the motion, a whopping 66% of the PM’s backbench effectively voted to remove him — double the margin faced by Ms Gillard when Mr Abbott suggested her government was illegitimate.

Things get even more awkward for the Prime Minister when you read his follow-up question:

“How can the Prime Minister claim to be leading a united team when the former Prime Minister and the former foreign minister said that the Prime Minister had ‘lost the trust of the Australian people’ and 31 of her caucus colleagues backed the former Prime Minister?”

That’s going to come back to haunt him.

Perhaps Mr Abbott can take some solace in Ms Gillard’s response:

“I say to the Leader of the Opposition that I always give him full marks for audacity, if not consistency,” she said.

“He comes into this parliament having survived his leadership issues by one vote. It is no wonder the Leader of the Opposition got some new suits after he became Leader of the Opposition. The rest of them were covered with blood!

“Let me be very clear with the Leader of the Opposition and the Australian people about the circumstances of today.

“As I have just explained to the Australian people, we met this morning and I have the overwhelming support of my colleagues. As a united team, we will be there providing the government this nation needs.

“We will be ensuring that we are managing the economy today in the interests of working people while we build the economy they will need tomorrow, so that they will have opportunities and prospects for themselves and for their children.

“At the same time, we will be providing the benefits that working families need. Unlike the Leader of the Opposition, we will not be cowering in the face of the challenges of the future. “We will be addressing those challenges and building a clean energy future, ensuring that we share the proceeds of the mining boom.

“To the Leader of the Opposition, who comes into this place to talk about trust and confidence, I say this. Australians can trust me to get the job done and they can have the confidence that, in the hardest of circumstances, I will win through in their interests, no matter how relentlessly negative the Leader of the Opposition is.”

Julia Gillard remained in the top job for another 16 months after the 2012 spill, a fate Mr Abbott will be lucky to match.