Barnaby Joyce, a National, hasn't a vote for the Liberal leadership. But he's a man of opinions and now he's on the backbench there are no restraints on his expressing them.

On Monday night, amid the feeding frenzy over Newspoll, Mr Joyce declared that if, as Christmas approached, polling indicated Malcolm Turnbull was heading to electoral defeat, he should call it quits. There was an obligation "not to drive your party or the government off a cliff," he told Sky.

A new unhelpful spot fire erupted into flame.

With the fateful 30th Newspoll finally out there, the government on Monday descended into an orgy of destructive self-indulgence. It was a collective performance made up of individual bitterness, tactical misjudgement, and plain ill-discipline. Just the sort of thing to further disgust a public already turned off by the shambles of Canberra.

For Tony Abbott, Monday was the occasion for the primal scream. It might be two-and-a-half years since Mr Turnbull seized his job, but the former prime minister's pain hasn't abated a jot, nor his sense of what he sees as the injustice delivered to him.

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http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-10/turnbulls-newspoll-strategy-backfi...