Australian politics reached a new point last week when the handbag hit squad and the reverse handbag hit squad slugged it out in 30 frenetic minutes before parliamentary question time. If you missed the encounter - and it was easy to miss given everything hurtles through the national affairs universe with the force of water from a fire hose - let's recap.

The trigger was Tony Abbott, holding a press conference in the Bali Memorial Gardens about compensation for terrorism victims. The fine print, for our purposes, doesn't much matter.

Attorney-General Nicola Roxon was displeased with the development and rose up in high dudgeon. Abbott was wicked for bringing base politics into the memorial garden, she said.

Abbott's deputy, Julie Bishop, then summoned the television cameras. ''I have called this press conference because the Coalition intends to draw a line in the sand. Enough is enough. Nicola Roxon has stepped over the line, she has gone too far and I condemn her for trying to turn Tony Abbott's passion and concern for the victims of the Bali bombing into a political point scoring effort. We've had enough and it is time that the Prime Minister pulled her male strategists into line [and] stopped her female members trying to take points against Tony Abbott on matters as sensitive as the Bali bombing victims.''

So let's think this sequence through. We had one woman bagging Abbott, followed by another defending Abbott and bagging the other woman for bagging him. Bit of a circus really, signifying what exactly?

Handbag hit squad politics has landed in the national capital. You've caught up with this piquant phrase? It's what Liberal ladies now say of the Labor ladies lining up regularly to have a crack at Tony Abbott.

This particular case study was dizzying: everyone crossing lines and thundering censoriously about lines being crossed. As American comedian Jon Stewart said recently in a different context, it's chaos on bullshit mountain.

Let's look through the chaos to the resonance. The Liberal ladies are correct. Labor is gradually, with purpose and intent, firing up the character question about Abbott.

The switch in the conversation happened in late August, in the week Julia Gillard was forced to defend herself against allegations of professional misconduct at the law firm Slater & Gordon.

Abbott himself provided the catalyst. He was thrown out of Parliament by acting Speaker Anna Burke after a burst of over-the-top, culminating in a glower. Health Minister Tanya Plibersek bobbed up on TV to opine that Abbott simply couldn't deal with women in authority; not the acting Speaker, not the Prime Minister, not anyone.

At the same time, Gillard nudged sexism to the foreground. Rather than gritting her teeth and toughing out the now quite self-evident notion that some men in this country really can't seem to cope with a female prime minister - she owned it. It was not so much a gripe, because the PM is not a moaner. This was fact; there was field evidence.

So the two ideas now hover together in the Zeitgeist: Tony has ''a woman problem'', and some men are just not evolved enough to accept a woman as prime minister.

Usually Labor women carry that message, but that's no particular conspiracy. Labor has several women on the frontbench and most are skilled, cut-through communicators, particularly on TV.

So that's the Labor Party pincer movement. Now what of the substantive point?

Given we inhabit bullshit mountain, let's take actions as a more reliable barometer than rhetoric.

The Liberals are evidently, demonstrably, worried about this attack on Abbott. The rally from Bishop and from other Liberal ladies suggests the opposition is concerned that perceptions will take root - aided by the unhelpful coincidence of David Marr's Quarterly Essay, complete with that now-infamous, wall-punching allegation. Baseless nonsense about the Quarterly Essay being the product of a Labor dirt unit demonstrates tangible Coalition concern. Hence the efforts to neutralise the issue, pronto.

Abbott is both wildly successful and wildly unpopular. He's an old-fashioned, socially conservative bloke. He's dialling it down, but his politics are aggressive, sometimes swingeing. The most recent Age/Nielsen poll showed women approve less of Abbott than men on both the preferred prime minister and performance measures.

Negative attacks only work in politics if they speak to pre-existing notions, if they amplify and shape nascent perceptions.

The best such attacks transform wafting supposition into concrete judgment.

I don't think Tony Abbott has a problem with women in substance. That's my view, formed in close proximity. But perceptions formed at a distance are another matter altogether. Take ''old-fashioned Tony'', add lashings of past pre-feminist exuberance, add his enduring hard-wired hyper-competitiveness, combine it with the Coalition's core political strategy - which, to put it kindly, has lacked light and shade - and you have the elements of a perfect storm on the gender question.

It's a trap of his own design.

The antidote won't be Bishop with a thumping reverse Prada. It will lie with Abbott. Does he trust himself enough to leaven and grow, and to prioritise the need for him to outgrow the caricature? We are about to find out.

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