Tony Abbott and some of his cabinet ministers have canvassed the prospect of an early double dissolution election to be held in the next few months.
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A minister who was present at the discussion over a private dinner on Monday night said that the idea was talked about but "not under serious contemplation".
And the Prime Minister told Fairfax Media that "the government intends to serve a full term".
But the mere fact that it was mooted has had an unsettling effect inside an anxious government.
"The concern is that Tony might consider it to forestall any move against his leadership," said a minister.
"Given his increasing desperation, there could be a rush to the Governor-General," with the implication that Mr Abbott would gamble government to preserve his position.
The scenario canvassed at dinner was that the government would bring down its second budget in May and then quickly call a double dissolution election, ostensibly to clear an obstructionist Senate.
This would be more than a year early. The next federal election isn't due until January 2017 at the latest.
Mr Abbott on Tuesday told his party room that the government had been trying to get its budget measures through a "feral Senate".
In trying to defeat the spill motion brought against him last month, Mr Abbott asked some of his backbenchers to give him until June.
After next week, there are no more opportunities for a spill against the Prime Minister before the budget.
Spills can only be brought on during sitting weeks, unless there are extraordinary circumstances, and next week is the last sitting week until budget day, May 12.
The topic of an early election arose when the group, hosted at dinner by Mr Abbott, turned to the looming defeat of the government's university deregulation proposal.
The Senate voted down the government's reform bill on Tuesday.
It is one in a lengthening list of government proposals frustrated in the Senate.
Over $25 billion in proposed budget savings have now been defeated or delayed in the Senate.
"We would need to be on crack" to go to a double dissolution with the government's current poor standing in the polls, said a cabinet minister.
"It would be a suicide pact," said another Liberal.
A backbencher said that whispers of an early election had reached the rank-and-file MPs after the cabinet-level dinner, and it had created some jitters.
"I don't know if Tony would be crazy-brave enough to call a 'double D' but it would be a chance to present our policies to the electorate and ask for a mandate," he said.
The defeated university bills would not represent a trigger for a double dissolution, according to the consensus of a separate meeting on Monday of the government's leadership group.
This is because the legislation, which must be rejected by the Senate twice to be a trigger, was presented in a different form to the original when it was first defeated.
But the government already has the triggers that it would need if it chose to go to double dissolution, or dissolving both the House and Senate ahead of schedule.
It has two triggers, both relating to the package of 11 bills that repealed the carbon price and related measures last year.
A Labor strategist said that the government stood "a realistic prospect of winning a double D," brought on immediately after the budget, "but it also has a bloody realistic prospect of losing."
He said: "It'd want to be a pretty good budget."
