The rather miserable fortnight the Albanese government spent in parliament this month has given way to a miserable week outside of parliament.
The common factors are that someone else always seems to be setting the agenda, and the agenda being set doesn't seem to have much to do with actually trying to run the country.
Yes, the Coalition supported the government to pass a couple of pieces of legislation in the parliament, which many have heralded as signalling a profound change from the deadlock the government was facing in the Senate from a combination of the Coalition and the Greens.
But that analysis overlooks the particular nature of the two pieces of legislation, and the bigger political problem Anthony Albanese's government faces from the bomb throwers in both the Coalition and the Greens in the day-to-day prosecution of political issues.
Appointing an administrator to the CFMEU, and getting through changes to the NDIS, were both issues which the Coalition had already indicated it would back. And it was particularly under pressure from business constituents to act on the CFMEU.
But it is leaving the government swinging for now on crucial aged care reforms. The Coalition has signed off on these reforms internally but Opposition Leader Peter Dutton insists he wants to take them back to the party room for final approval.
Aged care reform is always so politically sensitive that neither side is going to commit without a written agreement on them.
The Coalition has also left the government hanging on changes to the Reserve Bank Act. The government argues it has made all the concessions the Coalition wants and is mystified by the hold-up.
But now when parliament comes back, there will be posturing from the Greens on the inexplicable mire the government has got itself into over questions in a census — which is still two years away — on sexuality and gender, including gender identity and intersex status.
Greens and Coalition causing a game of whack-a-mole
The Coalition's posturing on visas for people coming from Gaza — where the borders have been closed for months — has been replaced by a wall of noise from the Greens, most notably the ill-advised decision of Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather to address a CFMEU rally in Brisbane.
Not only did his appearance prompt widespread condemnation, Labor MPs couldn't quite believe their luck that, on an issue which is profoundly difficult for a government with its roots in the labour movement, someone was prepared to criticise them for taking too tough a line on a rogue union.
If you are standing in the shoes of a government minister, politics must feel a bit like a particularly frustrating game of whack-a-mole just now.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers decided to jump the rails from the economic debate into the culture wars on Monday with an attack on Dutton as "the most divisive leader of a major political party in Australia's modern history".
"At a time when most sane people see political divisiveness around the world and want to reject it, he wants to embrace it. It is the only plank in his political platform," he said. "This is worse than disappointing, it is dangerous."
Chalmers' outburst reflected a growing frustration within the government that Dutton is hogging most of the air time with populist appeals to people's concerns about migration and national security which don't necessarily make any policy sense.
More significantly, they think he and his shadow treasurer are getting away with not having any substantive policy positions, let alone policy details.
That is, we could get to the election campaign proper without serious questions raised about things like whether Dutton has a set of policies to deal with the cost of living and the economy.
$100b in cuts flagged, but details remain elusive
A story emerged early in the week in The Australian asserting that the Coalition will go the next election "with budget and off-budget savings of close to $100 billion in a 'back to basics' inflation-fighting agenda that will see a raft of Labor spending programs axed".
It proved to be what is known in the trade as an exclusive that remains an exclusive.
While Liberal MP Angus Taylor had spoken to the journalist who wrote the story, both he and Dutton subsequently dissembled about whether it was correct or not, saying variously that we will see more detail later, and that there was nothing much to see because the Coalition had in fact already spelt out at least $90 billion of savings measures already.
(This includes measures which sound good to those in search of fiscal restraint — like cutting 30,000 public service jobs. Except the public service jobs replaced much more expensive jobs being done by private consultancies under the Coalition.)
Loading...
The $90 billion is also at odds with the $315 billion of savings measures the Coalition has also floated at various stages. Bringing the speculation back to "just" $100 billion might be an exercise in re-setting expectations.
But like the Coalition's nuclear policy, the details — or even a commitment to outline them — remains elusive. Having floated the idea of big spending cuts to help inflation, the idea seemed to subside into the shadows again.
Loading
Our economic policy debate has descended into low farce
The Greens were also floating big numbers, with leader Adam Bandt proposing at the National Press Club this week an agenda involving raising $514 billion in taxes from big business over 10 years. These "Robin Hood reforms" involve super-taxes on miners, banks and other large corporations, including a re-run of Labor's mining tax which otherwise dare not speak its name.
At a time when big business is on the nose with voters facing a cost-of-living crisis even more than politicians, saying you are going to impose taxes on "excessive" corporate profits, "gas and oil" and "coal and mining" might sound superficially attractive to some voters.
But numbers like $514 billion — or for that matter $100 billion or $315 billion (take your pick) — have a certain "gazillion" quality to them which reflects just how far our budget and economic policy debate have descended in recent years into low farce and ideas that don't actually withstand much scrutiny.
It's not going to get any better between now and the election next year either.
We are now firmly in a three-way contest with the Greens emboldened by the prospect that the mathematics of seats that can be won and lost have led most analysts to assume there will be a minority Labor government at best.
That seems only more likely while the prime minister and his colleagues seem unable to find a cut-through response to either the Coalition's culture wars or the Greens picking off issues like housing and rents and running with them.
The government seems firmly stuck in a game of piggy in the middle, desperately trying to catch the ball as it is thrown between its two major political opponents.
Laura Tingle is 7.30's chief political correspondent.
