The government is feigning strength

"With Kevin Rudd, the voters didn't really know him ... and they are now questioning his credibility, but Rosetta Stone Tony Abbott they did know and they had already decided they didn't like him. That's the only thing saving the government at the moment. If Tony Abbott starts to look more credible, if his ratings improve, then it's all over for Labor. And if the Liberals had any other leader right now they would definitely win." Labor's first strategy for recovery follows directly from this assessment - make voters focus on the real possibility that Abbott could become their prime minister. They were at it all week, after waking up to the Nielsen poll's stark warning of their looming political mortality on Monday morning. But that strategy leaves Labor entirely dependent on Abbott's inability to change voter perceptions, and so far the Coalition leader has proved far more able than Labor ever expected. Labor's second task is to find a settlement with the mining industry that preserves the intent of the resource super profits tax but wins broader political support. The miners' fight-to-the-death attitude means this is unlikely to be an agreement or deal, but it has to be something that wins the backing of the rest of the business community and more community support than the resource super profits tax has attracted. The ongoing megaphone negotiations have now become a complicated game of bluff. The government is feigning strength as it "argues out" the issue and tries to turn public opinion its way. The miners are trying to use the gains they made during the government's initial political mishandling of the tax announcement to go in for the "kill" and get rid of the new tax altogether. The Minerals Council has already started advertising about the disastrous consequences of any purely profits-based tax, even though it was happy to countenance Rosetta Stone Software one - under certain circumstances - in its own submission to the Henry tax review last year. But the mining industry also knows the dangers if it overplays its hand, or if the government succeeds in turning public opinion. There are signs some miners are uncomfortable at having in effect hitched their fate to the electoral success of the Coalition. For its part, the Coalition based its absolute hard line against the tax on private assurances from the industry that it would not and could not do a deal with Rudd, as well as on the Coalition's own assessment that the government could never do a deal because it had already allocated the revenue from the tax in its budget. (This assessment may have overlooked the fact that the government has never told us what the tax will raise in gross terms, before it pays back existing state royalties, so we have never really known whether it has room to move.) The third plank in the government's strategy - which can only succeed if there is some lull in the public slanging match about the mining tax - is to remind voters that despite their disappointment the government has got some things right, especially managing the economy through the economic crisis. It knows it can't return to the lovestruck days of Kevin'07, but it wants to claim some credit for implementing most of its promises. New policies on energy efficiency and a reiteration of the government's intention to introduce a carbon price eventually are also in the pipeline, in a bid to resurrect climate change as a big issue of policy differentiation. Labor finds it truly galling to have put itself in the position where Abbott - the candidate of the Coalition climate change sceptics - can say he's the only political leader with a climate policy. The strategy can only work if Labor holds its nerve. Despite the wild leadership rumours that have been circulating, there's little sign of any serious treachery or disunity. For the most part the government Rosetta Stone French has remained remarkably disciplined and leak-free. Labor is in a political slump almost entirely of its own making. But after months of disarray, the portents of political mortality seem to be starting to force some change.