The insurrection had made its point.

The guns were back in the holster. For the moment at least.

Dennis Jensen and Luke Simpkins, the Western Australian Liberals who brought the leadership crisis into the open, both insisted Abbott be given the time to reboot, reframe and right the Coalition ship.

Whichever term for renewal you favour, Abbott was to be allowed the clean air to make it happen.

One of the pro-spill figures told Fairfax Media: "It's a shame that it took a 'near-death experience' [as Abbott described Monday's party room meeting] to force change but that's what it took."

But if the sentiment about allowing some breathing space was genuine - as appears to be the case - the forces that lined up against Abbott were already talking about "tripwires" that, if triggered, will spark a fresh round of instability and probably a switch to Malcolm Turnbull.

The most immediate is the March state election in NSW and whether the "Abbott factor" has anegative impact on Premier Mike Baird's election campaign.

But by far the greatest looming challenge is Treasurer Joe Hockey's second budget.

"It has to be a ball-tearer," says a spill backer.

Hockey was as much in the sights of the malcontents as his gaffe-prone boss.

Abbott's knighting of Prince Philip may have lit the match of leadership threat but it was the first Hockey budget, and debacles like the Medicare co-payment it created, that provided the dry fuel for the situation to burn nearly out of Abbott's control.

An experienced player around the crossbench says the leadership debacle has, ironically, given the Abbott-Hockey partnership one last chance to sell the case for budget reform that they may not deserve.

"People see them as deceitful and because of that they stopped listening. The spill marked the lowest point for Abbott but I think it has actually acted as a circuit breaker. I don't think they have more than three months but people are probably willing to listen to the case one more time."

Crossbenchers tell Fairfax Media that there are some signs the government will deliver the "collegiality" promised by Abbott as he fought for survival.

Encouraged by meetings with new Health Minister Sussan Ley and Education Minister Christopher Pyne this week, Victorian senator John Madigan has dusted off a file of ideas his office prepared ahead of budget 2014.

"They are fully costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office and we put a huge amount of effort into them. We sent them to the Treasurer but we never heard a single word back," he says.

Madigan's is just one of scores of budget submissions flowing into the Treasurer's office as the government's razor gang begins to ponder how to repair the structural imbalance in the budget without again losing the public's confidence – and as a result the support of the crossbench.

As Hockey watches the macroeconomy deteriorate by the month - and the "debt and deficit" repair job getting harder in lockstep - he is getting all sorts of free advice on how to frame budget 2.0.

He is also dealing with new dangers on the ever-lengthening path back to surplus. Not least of which is a battered and unpopular Abbott who has begun talking about "putting money in the pockets of families" with a childcare and families package to replace his dumped paid parental leave scheme.

Experts who spoke to Fairfax Media say Abbott will be able to shower a bit of largesse in the direction of families as long as the government is willing to embrace a fundamentally new approach to budget surgery.

Central to that is the concept of fairness and the government's willingness to consider attacking the "revenue side" which would mean high-income earners losing some of the perks built into the tax system, like concessions on superannuation.

On Friday, Hockey repeated his view that increasing taxes "slows down the economy and costs jobs" and that the Coalition had promised at the election not to touch superannuation during this term of government.

John Daley, chief executive of the Grattan Institute, says one more broken promise may need to be made in the interests of budget repair.

"They made a series of inconsistent promises: 'we're not going to touch pensions, super or tax but we are going to make the budget balance'. They are going to have to break one of those promises if balancing the budget is the main aim," he says.

To put into perspective the pool of money available to the government, the Grattan Institute estimates there is $28 billion that could be saved if lurks around superannuation and aged pensions were eradicated.

That's almost double the $15 billion-odd currently stalled in the Senate as the failed centrepiece of the first Coalition budget, including cuts to the Medicare rebate, higher fuel excise and reduced pharmaceutical subsidies.

The aged pension is the biggest single expenditure item for the Commonwealth and Daley says it is the biggest source of "middle-class welfare" available.

"If you're really serious you would have a go at the eligibility for the pension. Eighty per cent of people over 65 with over $1 million in assets are still collecting a pension."

Daley proposes a system for the "asset rich, cash poor" retirees whereby they receive the pension as a loan, paid back to the government after they die. But he acknowledges the task of selling the idea to Australians banking on an inheritance could be beyond the current leadership.

Stephen Anthony, director of budget and forecasting at Macroeconomics and a former Finance Department official, says Hockey's failure to shoot for middle-class welfare was the biggest factor in his first attempt attracting the unwanted tag as simply "unfair".

"To get the political deal you have to offer up something that impacts upon the upper income earners," Anthony says.

"The thing that was lacking from the first budget was that little bit of nuance that would get the political deal through the House. It was a little too ideological and also a little naïve."

He says Hockey will have to be a "magician" to turn things around.

Anthony advises raising the capital gains tax rate from the current 15 per cent to closer to the marginal income tax rate of an individual.

But he says the government cannot afford to go in blindly on budget night with another bag of "suicidal or ill-advised" policies.

While the grounds of Kirribilli House were used to host Kyle Sandilands when Julia Gillard was in power, Anthony says Abbott should use the allure of Sydney's finest harbour front to bring together crossbenchers, the head of Treasury and the Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens to explore the depths of the deficit threat.

This week Hockey told the Coalition joint party rooms that the country "may never get back to surplus" the way things are going. That was before the unemployment rate jumped to its highest level in 13 years and evidence emerged that budget cuts were not even covering higher spending under the Abbott government.

Tony Shepherd, the businessman who led last year's government-wide Commission of Audit, says the structural imbalance in the budget cannot be countered unless spending is slashed.

He says anyone who thinks the estimated $65 billion in savings that need to be enforced by 2023-24 can be achieved by tweaks to the revenue side is "dreaming".

"People think tax [rises] is the answer. Well, maybe, but it's a deadly weapon. You don't want to tax people to death. You want to grow the private sector," Shepherd says.

The audit found the government's biggest expenditure items, pensions, health and education are growing at an unsustainable 6.9 per cent a year.

"You've just got to bite the bullet and cut. There's no soft answers. No soft way out."

Hockey knows that. He also knows that anything short of a "ball-tearer" of a budget will mean his career as Treasurer is over.