Tony Abbott: from political rooster to feather duster in seventeen months?

Tony Abbott during his unsuccessful bid to rally backbenchers & voters behind him

National Press Council Address

2 February 2015 

The anglophile who only became an Australian citizen for personal financial advantage, the aggressive bully who thought his divine destiny was to rule the country, the intellectual lightweight who believes good policy is a quiverful of three-word slogans, the man whose sense of entitlement has him dipping his hand deep into the taxpayer's pocket, the right wing ideologue without a decent bone in his body, the sole author of his own misfortune  - has Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott  finally morphed into a political feather duster?

West Australian Liberal MP for Cowan, LukeSimpkin, signalling the party leadership spill scheduled for 10 February 2015:

@latikambourke, 6 February 2015

The Daily Telegraph, 6 February 2015:

An angry Mr Abbott yesterday called a press conference to stare down his backbench, before sending out cabinet ministers to back his leadership publicly.

Tony Abbott’s Press Statement, 6 February 2015:

As you know, two of my colleagues have called for a leadership spill of the two senior positions in our Party. They’ve called for a spill of my position as leader and they’ve called for a spill of Julie Bishop’s position as Deputy.
The first point to make is that they are perfectly entitled to call for this, but the next point to make is that they are asking the Party Room to vote out the people that the electorate voted in in September 2013.
I want to make this very simple point: we are not the Labor Party. We are not the Labor Party and we are not going to repeat the chaos and the instability of the Labor years.
So, I have spoken to Deputy Leader Julie Bishop and we will stand together in urging the Party Room to defeat this particular motion, and in so doing, and in defeating this motion to vote in favour of the stability and the team that the people voted for at the election.
We have a strong plan. It’s the strong plan that I enunciated at the Press Club this week and we are determined to get on with it – and we will.

Julie Bishop's position as deputy leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party will also fall vacant if the spill motion is successful.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 February 2015:

On Friday evening, after a spill motion to oust the Prime Minister was moved, Channel Nine's political editor Laurie Oakes reported the Prime Minister's office "was so concerned about the optics of them appearing together looking like a unity ticket", it asked Ms Bishop to cancel her attendance at the fundraiser with Mr Turnbull but she refused.

UPDATE

Abbott blinks?