[2] Incumbent Prime Minister Tony Abbott and deputy leader of the Liberal Party Julie Bishop jointly stood in opposition to the motion[3] which was defeated by 61 votes to 39.

Tony Abbott became leader of the Liberal Party in December 2009 after forcing a leadership ballot on the subject of Malcolm Turnbull's support of the Labor First Rudd government's proposed Emissions Trading Scheme.

[21] The sitting Liberal National Party suffered a 14 point two-party swing, and lost what was considered an unlosable election (owing to its overwhelming majority) to Labor, which subsequently formed minority government.

[22] Dissent initially emerged from backbenchers, including Andrew Laming from Queensland,[23] and Western Australia's Dennis Jensen, who was the first Liberal MP to publicly call on the prime minister to resign.

On Friday, 6 February, Simpkins submitted to the Chief Government Whip a motion, seconded by Randall, to spill the parliamentary leadership positions of the Liberal Party.

[25] On the day before the leadership spill vote, Abbott announced that a planned submarine deal, which previously seemed likely to be manufactured by Japanese shipbuilders, would instead proceed with an "open tender".

[26] Various media sources have reported that a National Civic Council NCC email campaign helped in part to secure Tony Abbott's position as Prime Minister before the spill motion in February 2015.

[30][31] On the morning of 9 February, The Australian reported that a Newspoll survey conducted over the previous days had found that Abbott was the most unpopular Prime Minister since Paul Keating in 1994.

[34] The Australian Financial Review stated that the results of this and other recent polling were "disastrous" for the government, and that "Voters have adopted an 'anyone but Abbott' view of the Liberal leadership".

[36] In this speech, Abbott also made a new commitment to further cut tax rates for small businesses, promised that the 2015 budget would leave families better off and agreed to reduce the role his chief of staff Peta Credlin plays in the government.

[36] Michelle Grattan, writing in The Conversation, argued that the "narrow margin" of the vote left Abbott "deeply vulnerable to later destabilisation".

[39] On 13 February, Abbott removed Father of the Parliament Philip Ruddock from his position as Chief Government Whip in the House of Representatives and replaced him with Scott Buchholz.