While Tony Abbott has successfully fended off this week’s assault on his leadership, there is still some speculation about how things could have been.

There is widespread belief that Malcolm Turnbull retains his leadership ambitions, and may still be on his way up, leading some insiders to project what life might be like under the reign of the LNP’s Mr Nice Guy.

For the nation’s 160,000-strong public sector workforce, the age of Turnbull might have been a welcome change.

Former Defence Department deputy secretary Paddy Gourley says Mr Abbott's office tends to seeks back-up from the bureaucracy for decisions it made without consultation.

Mr Gourley said he expected Mr Turnbull as prime minister would treat the public service differently.

“I understand his relations with his [Communications] Department is very good,” Mr Gourley told Fairfax Media.

“If he was prime minister, I expect dealings with the public service would be better ordered than at the moment.

“The public service's advice would be more welcomed, appreciated and probably more influential.”

Dr Judy Johnston from the University of Technology Sydney says Mr Turnbull would have a better “understanding of what the bureaucracy could do for the government” than Abbott.

Turnbull himself commented on the public sector at the launch of news website The Mandarin last year, encouraging them to try new things and admonishing bosses who punish innovation.

Mr Turnbull told the Canberra audience that the bureaucracy had a “culture where the penalties for ‘failure’ are vastly out of proportion to the rewards for success”.

“And that is very common in the public service, that you naturally have an incentive for any rational actor to do nothing, or to be very cautious if they ever do anything.”

“We've got to try new things and, if you try new things, a lot of them won't work. But so what? If you smash people because they try something and it doesn't work, then they'll never try anything new again,” Turnbull said.

Former deputy secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Meredith Edwards says that while decision-making has become more centralised – and Turnbull and Abbott are very different people – neither would do much different.

“What happens in the prime minister's office is critical to what happens in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the whole of the public service,” Emeritus Professor Edwards told reporters.

“And Turnbull has been described in the press as autocratic. I'm not talking about whether there are differences in policy between Abbott and Turnbull, I'm referring to process.”