Prime Minster Tony Abbott's leadership group has been discussing an early election plan. Credit:Andrew Meares Many Australians are judging Mr Abbott's management harshly already. Indeed, being in government has turned out to be so hard that some ministers and others in his inner circle even considered plans to commit hara kiri through a double dissolution election. What a shambles. Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said on Thursday: "The important thing is to keep heading in the right direction."

What direction? The government must think people are mind-readers or, worse, plain gullible. What was until a few weeks ago a budget emergency is now "manageable", it seems, and even on the verge of returning to "broad balance" in five years. The real issue is that after five years the structural costs in the budget condemn the nation to bigger deficits for the foreseeable future. What was until a few weeks ago "a debt and deficit disaster" is now OK, it seems. Mr Abbott says "a ratio of debt to GDP at about 50 or 60 per cent is a pretty good result looking around the world" and, best of all, Australia will not be as bad as Greece. And where is Treasurer Joe Hockey in all this? Claiming that he is "always conscious of taking people's money off them", when in fact his first budget planned to do just that to those who could least afford it. What's more, the sort of reforms required now to fix the budget would not involve taking money from the well-off but rather ending the unjustified perks they enjoy in the tax system.

The government's shambolic messaging hardly engenders confidence in a budget to be presented in less than eight weeks. No wonder senior public servants and Treasury officials are struggling to work out what the government is trying to achieve. According to Mr Abbott, the aim is a "dull and routine" budget. What a cop-out. Having failed miserably last May through budget overreach, and only managing to reduce spending significantly by cutting foreign aid and slashing funding to the states for education and health, the government now pretends to be household friendly. Certainly it is not the time to cut harshly because the economy remains moribund, largely because of voter and business dismay at the government's plans. And some budget changes will require an electoral mandate. Other reforms, however, simply require courage to tackle the age of entitlement mentality that resides among so many of the coalition's own supporters, who rely on lucrative tax breaks for superannuation, negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts.

The government insists it will keep prosecuting the case for structural reform and that the budget will have a strategy. The aim is to support small bus­iness, families, workforce participation for women and infrastructure. But what about some leadership on higher education, rather than the embarrassing, undergraduate antics of Christopher Pyne? The Leader of the House should be ashamed of his performance this week. The self-declared fixer has emerged as a wrecker, making threats and grandiose statements while taking voters for idiots. Rather than accept constructive suggestions from experts in the field to limit the deleterious effects of his university fee deregulations plans, he has found it all too hard. His performance as Education Minister must rank alongside Peter Dutton's in health as a microcosm of what is going wrong with this government. Mr Dutton got the hospital pass to immigration. Mr Pyne's future must be similarly in doubt. But it would be all too hard for Mr Abbott to admit that because the more members of his team fail to deliver, the more questions voters ask about the Prime Minister's ability to manage the government. Having conceded last month that he had been chastened by the significant leadership vote against him, Mr Abbott has become erratic at best. It is as though he is finding it all too hard to work out what governments do.

Governments lead. They prosecute their policies clearly, fairly and consistently. And they seek solutions to problems. Unless, of course, they are the problem.