HOW many more bungles are needed before the cocky captain stops blundering?

Enough has been said about awarding an Australian knighthood to Prince Philip, but there are so many more botch-ups.

How can this Prime Minister maintain his attitude and confidence after making so many gaffes and yet cockily front up to make more? To comprehend this thinking requires an understanding of the Catholic tradition in which he was raised, along with the vast majority of his cabinet colleagues.

Tony Abbott was raised as a conservative Catholic and he remains a very committed part of the flock. One interesting element of this part of the Christian tradition that shapes character is the sacrament of confession (now often called reconciliation). Make a mistake, confess, do penance, receive absolution and start afresh. Weekly confession was a normal practice for “good” Catholics in the era of Tony’s youth.

In politics, the Prime Minister’s confession has been translated into: “In the end this is my call and I’m happy to take these things on the chin”.

He told reporters in Colac, Victoria: “I’m sure if I went into the pub to talk about it they’d say it was a stuff-up,” he said.

“I’d take that on the chin and then we’d move on and discuss other subjects, and that’s exactly what I propose to do today.”

If it was just this one bungle it might even work. However, the litany of mistakes, bungles and bad calls are much harder to absolve.

So many calamities. The Medicare co-payment is amongst the greatest. Tony Abbott’s complete faith in the power of personal responsibility and his headlong drive to bring a very healthy Triple-A rating Budget into surplus has blinded him to the punters’ appreciation of Medicare.

The first attack was struck down by the Senate amongst demonstrative reaction from ordinary Australians. “Abbott-think” missed the message, ignored the democratic decision and found a way around it by asking doctors to wear a $3 billion cut or extract it from their patients. And now we learn that this was another “captain’s call”.

The Abbott government was able to find a one per cent tax cut for corporate Australia and remove the mining tax while asking poorer Australians to “shoulder their share of the burden”.

In the middle of the controversy, complaining about the dire circumstances left by Labor, they announced the purchase of 58 more F-35 Joint Strike Fighters at an estimated cost of $12.4 billion.

Then there is his attitude to women. How many times will he need to confess and seek forgiveness?  One woman in the cabinet. Winking at the interviewer during a call from a phone-sex worker concerned about the Medicare co-payment.

On Fiona Scott, MP for Lindsay, he said: “Young, feisty, I think I can probably say, has a bit of sex appeal.” On gender roles: “What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing…”. There was also a captain’s call on paid maternity leave.

Attempting to turn the disaster around Abbott has tried to take control as the team’s captain.

“This is a very strong team,” he said. “They’ve got a very good captain. It takes a good captain to help all the players of a team to excel.”

Has he forgotten the prime minister is the first amongst equals?

Trust is a critical element of the successful politician and leader. Constantly confessing about political catastrophes can only go on for so long. Large parts of the community are running low on forgiveness. And so are many in the Parliamentary Liberal Party.

Michael Moore was an independent member of the ACT Legislative Assembly (1989 to 2001) and was minister for health.