WHEN she plays host to caucus members at a Lodge barbecue on Sunday week, Julia Gillard will be all too aware that these men and women enjoying her hospitality could within months become her executioners - depending mainly on what happens to Labor in the polls.
Gillard has seen in two new years as PM; they have both started badly for her. In 2011 she was described as too wooden in her appearances after the Queensland floods. This year has begun with a fresh dent to her credibility, when she ditched her pledge to independent MP Andrew Wilkie over pokies reform.
Admittedly, Gillard faced an invidious choice on gambling. Sections of caucus were in revolt and Kevin Rudd could exploit their anxiety. She was not going to get the crossbench numbers in Parliament for mandatory pre-commitment. Unless she acted, the issue would drag on, sucking attention from positives. So best, she thought, to cut her losses early and retreat to her compromise for a trial of pre-commitment in the ACT.
This might have been the sensible tactic if she had a healthy balance in her fund of political trust. But her account is disastrously overdrawn. Better to have persisted with her original plan, introduced legislation and have it go down in the House or (second best) withdrawn it close to the vote, when there had been extensive talks with the crossbenchers.
Messy and distracting, yes - but it would have looked more gutsy, on an issue where there has been strong public support for the government's initial position (An Essential Poll this week found 62 per cent backing for pre-commitment).
The government is paranoid about losing a vote on legislation in the House. It boasts it hasn't been defeated on a bill there - a spurious claim because it has avoided votes on significant bills when the numbers weren't there (for the Malaysia solution; a means test on the health insurance rebate).
Apart from whacking her credibility again, Gillard's cut-and-run reinforces the impression she is beholden to the New South Wales Labor Right, which was concerned the pokies issue was cutting into the heartland vote.
The affair is another indication of the cost of minority government to the PM. Desperate to keep office, she overcommitted to Wilkie and now has under-delivered. Questioned at the National Press Club this week, minister Anthony Albanese said: ''There has been no conscious decision to break promises. We have dealt with the Parliament that we were given.'' A cynic might say, at least on gambling: when you saw the hung Parliament, you should have been careful what you promised. But at the time, the one priority was staying in power.
Gillard passed on giving a pre-Australia Day speech this week but next week will make a major address in Melbourne, focusing on the economy. She has a strong story to tell - not that the government gets much credit - but how things go from here depends substantially on what happens abroad where, as the International Monetary Fund reminded us again this week, there are some scary portents. That promise of a 2012-13 surplus could be in play again.
As she waits for the first of 2012's major polls, Gillard must know she is operating against considerable odds. She has to get Labor's primary vote substantially above the 30 per cent mark around which it has hovered, and she hasn't a great deal of time to do it - although (unless caucus stampeded for some unforseen reason) the March 24 Queensland election would preclude anything happening before then. But how, when voters seem to have made up their minds, can Gillard expect the vote to go up? What is going to suddenly change their views? Nothing comes to mind.
With the government's slapdown of Wilkie, it has lost some of the cement that its wooing of Peter Slipper to the speakership brought to its numbers, although this can be overstated. Wilkie might become more bolshie but there is no sign he wants to see the government fall. He suggests it would take an issue of corruption or the like to have him support trying to turf it out.
But what would he think if Labor backbencher Craig Thomson, under investigation for alleged misuse of union funds, came to grief and the government attempted to tough things out? No wonder there have been suggestions Thomson would be immediately disendorsed if there was an adverse finding.
Tony Abbott's chances of felling Gillard in the next few months remain lower than the risk to her of being felled by Rudd. The paradox is that Rudd has little positive support in caucus but increasingly Labor MPs expect something to happen on the back of continued bad polls. ''Survival is the instinct that will kick in,'' says one backbencher, while another observes that ''marginal seat MPs will say 'we've got to get a better chance'.'' A third makes the obvious point: ''We're in a parlous situation in terms of the leadership.''
Given Gillard's credibility problem, it's ironic that Rudd's trashing of his own credibility by his prime ministerial retreat on carbon pricing started Labor's big downward spiral. But, despite that serious miscalculation, the balance in his ''trust'' account remains larger than than that in Gillard's.
Rudd will parade his peacock feathers in the Queensland campaign. If Bligh's losses are contained, he'll be given credit. But if they are massive, the implications for Gillard will be what grabs attention.
We can, it seems, expect 2012 to be another cracker year in Canberra.
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