Coalition a victim of its own trickiness as colleagues lose faith in Tony Abbott | Lenore Taylor

As the divisions deepen and the polls get worse, the government is again descending into a self-defeating cycle of instability and suspicion

Behind the Abbott government's very bad week - a careening series of disasters that looked like the political version of an AAMI ad - is a common thread that could wreck it permanently. Tricky politics has driven Tony Abbott into yet another crisis.

So many of the prime minister's problems begin in the strange netherworld of decision making, where policy is crafted to fit a slogan rather than the other way around, based on the insulting assumption that voters are too dumb to notice.