Just look at him in QT and during his pressers. Does he look like a happy and confident man? Is there a spring in his step? Why is his brow so often furrowed? Why does he so seldom smile? Does he look like the next PM in waiting?

Recall the cockiness he exhibited as he swaggered around factories, drove large trucks, operated machinery, stacked bananas at supermarkets, and kissed fish at fishmongers. Reflect on the hubris he showed as the polls rose spectacularly for the Coalition; remember the sly smile that lit up his craggy face after every poll. All gone now!

Something must be wrong. What is it? Is it his demeanour, his attitude, his behaviour, the way he looks, or even the way he walks? Or is it his policy positions on a number of issues? Perhaps it is all of the above.

On policy matters, he persists with his cobra-strike or python-squeeze or octopus-entangled carbon tax scaremongering although the predicted doom refuses to eventuate. At first persuaded that the sky might well fall in, then skeptical as it stayed in place, then jaded with the whole matter, and finally unconvinced in the face of contradictory data that put the lie to the scare campaign, the electorate has moved onto other matters. Because of this, and because his colleagues are uneasy about what now looks like a spectacular fizzer, the Opposition Leader has eased up on this a little. He now asks few questions himself in QT, his front bench is busy running a ‘disappearing surplus’ campaign, and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition is promoting a vicious resurrection of the tired old Slater & Gordon matter that has been settled years ago and again recently at PM Gillard’s mammoth press conference. Even the ‘turn back the boats’ mantra is losing its punch. There is nothing else. The grab bag of mantras is empty. And the bag of costed policies is bare. All there is left is a vacuum.

Until recently, it was only writers in the Fifth Estate that were pointing out that the vacuousness of the Leader of the Opposition, his nasty and at times vicious personality, the sexism he repeatedly exhibits, particularly directed towards our first female Prime Minister, and his spiteful behavior in the House and at sundry rallies and press conferences, made him wholly unsuitable to be leader of this nation.

Meanwhile the Fourth Estate continued with the charade that he was a shoo-in as the next PM, and that the real issue was by what vast number of seats he would win and how decimated Labor would be. All the leadership focus in the MSM was on the Gillard/Rudd ‘contest’; there was never a suggestion that the position of Leader of the Opposition was in jeopardy. How quickly things have changed.

On Insiders a program where scarcely a word has ever been uttered that questioned the security of the position of the Opposition Leader, last Sunday one of the panelists, Mike Seccombe, acerbically summed up his feelings about the Opposition Leader. After an introduction by Barrie Cassidy who referred to the weight Dunaden will carry in the Melbourne Cup, Seccombe said:

”Tony Abbott is a weight for the Liberal Party – he is a handicap for the Party. I think he is being exposed as a man with severe character defects. Frankly, he has been exposed as a man with lack of judgement – the Alan Joneses and Cory Bernardis and people like that.

“And his foot-in-mouth episodes that keep on rolling on and on and on – either showing him to be extremely mean-spirited and bullying on the one hand if he meant it as Mark Riley said, or if he didn’t mean it, he’s a dope who can’t open his mouth without accidentally getting into trouble.”

“So I think Tony Abbott is on the slide; at the moment I don’t see that it’s going to stop – it just goes from bad to worse day by day.”

We had never heard such a condemnation before on that program.

Seccombe, a Fourth Estate journalist, left no doubt about his feelings when he wrote an article in The Global Mail later in the week. Titled The Pack Circles, he begins:

”Tony Abbott is looking a bit beaten down these days. He has been for a little while actually.

“People who watch these things closely – and that means almost everyone in this merciless place – are noticing and reacting.

“In the press gallery, that means lots of speculation over coffee, if not yet so much in print and on air, about who might replace him. Give it a couple more of those dreadful poll results showing souring public perceptions of the opposition leader, and he’ll be in their sights, just as Julia Gillard was a few months back.

“On Abbott’s own side of politics, it means the backbench becoming increasingly unruly in Question Time…On the opposition front bench, it means other senior people are lifting their aggression levels…

“It is the opposition leader’s own behaviour, though, that is the real sign that things have changed. It used to be that he would open the bowling and carry much of the attack in Question Time each day. Not now. This week, Abbott has let the burden of attack be carried by others…Hockey and Bishop, Christopher Pyne, Scott Morrison and the odd backbencher.”

Seccombe then described how Greg Combet had mocked the Leader of the Opposition about all the dire predictions he had made about the carbon tax that had not come about.

He concluded: Combet ”finished his answer with a suggestion that it was about time the opposition got a new leader. He suggested either Hockey or Turnbull and, just for laughs included a possible ‘roughie’, the colourless Kevin Andrews. “Get someone who can tell the truth,” he snarled.”

“Well, there was hubbub. The government benches roared with amusement. The opposition benches roared with outrage.

“But Tony Abbott? He made no interjection. He made no eye contact. He stared fixedly at some papers in his lap.”

Has there been such a disparaging piece in the Fourth Estate? Yet, there has been more.

Last weekend, in News Limited’s The Weekend Australian no less a Coalition sycophant than Peter van Onselen gave the Opposition Leader a significant spray in Is this the turning point. He begins:

”Has the Gillard Labor government turned the corner? The evidence is mounting that Julia Gillard's political fortunes are improving. Whether these improvements morph into political salvation will take time to assess. There could be as long as 12 months to go before the next federal election is called, and the campaign itself can change the political climate significantly if the contest is close enough going in.”

Later he says: ”History therefore dictates that Abbott must find a way to arrest the decline in his party's primary vote, which may require pivoting from his deliberately negative style of campaigning.”

He concludes: ”In 1993 Abbott was press secretary to John Hewson, who lost what came to be dubbed as an unloseable election. If Abbott doesn't win next year's election he, too, will go down in history as having lost such a contest.”

We are yet to see similar warnings from Dennis Shanahan, Paul Kelly, Piers Akerman and Andrew Bolt!

But Michelle Grattan is beginning to have doubts. In Headaches for Abbott as tactics falter, she talks about polls, dissension in the ranks, too many tactics, some flawed, and not enough strategy, and ends with characteristic Grattan reassurance:

”Abbott doesn't need to push the panic button, but unless the final polls for the year bring some good news for him, there will be pressure for serious stocktaking over Christmas.”

There is still more from the Fourth Estate. It was in The Courier-Mail that Steven Scott wrote Something in the way he moves - Tony Abbott's swagger is turning off voters

”It's the swagger. That's the reason most frequently given by people in focus groups about why they do not like Tony Abbott.

“To single out the Opposition Leader's rolling gait for criticism may seem superficial or even unfair, but it's what this symbolises for many swinging voters that has Coalition strategists worried.

“To those uncommitted voters whose views are gold to political parties, the cringe factor that comes when they think about Abbott's confident strut is followed swiftly with a series of negative impressions - arrogant, cocky, angry.

“In what is now a clear trend, Labor's support is slowly improving and the Coalition's is falling. Satisfaction ratings for Abbott are on a continual slide.

"Tony has got a perception problem everywhere," one senior Coalition figure says of the impressions voters have of the Opposition Leader. "It's the way he walks sometimes ... the swagger."

“The Opposition is still on track to win the next election, but this is no longer looking as easy a task as it did only months ago. Many in the Coalition camp are starting to fret and a lot of their concern is directed at the man who helped get them into a winning position in the first place - Abbott.

“There is no suggestion that Abbott will face a leadership challenge. Even some of his toughest critics within the party concede leadership talk would cruel the Coalition's chances at the next election.

“But if Abbott's polling does not improve, this position could change.”