![Post-election politics is all about wounding Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.](/content/dam/images/g/r/1/8/y/k/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gr1dcx.png/1472476062948.jpg)
Apart from the presence in Parliament House this week of the newly elected senators undergoing orientation, you'd be hard pressed to know we've just had an election.
While Pauline Hanson, Derryn Hinch and the other dozen newcomers were being shown the ropes, it was otherwise business as usual with the government, Labor, the Greens and Nick Xenophon yelling at each other, just as they were doing before July 2.
There was not a scintilla of recognition that the Coalition had been re-elected, let alone had anything approaching a mandate.
"These guys are acting like they still have a 90-seat margin in the House of Representatives. They don't," Bill Shorten told the National Press Club on Wednesday.
"He acts like he got some massive mandate. They have a one-seat majority. We will be constructive, have no doubt about that, but what we are going to do is stick to our values on the way through."
That about sums it up. Between now and the next election, which is just over two years away, nobody intends to move an inch.
Everybody remains split
"Banks and Medicare mate," said a Labor source this week in summarising the Opposition's basic approach from here on in.
Or, as Tony Abbott said on Friday: "When it comes to budget repair, the reality is that this government has been in office, not in power."
The only area of agreement on the budget is that there is a problem. Everybody remains split on how best to address it. The government, funnily enough, wants to introduce the program that it took to the election it won while Labor is sticking like chewy to a blanket to its alternatives which include clamping down on negative gearing and capital gains tax deductions while leaving Medicare alone and welfare pretty much untouched.
Xenophon's NXT has its hand out for industry assistance before it will agree to anything, and the Greens are pretty much flogging the policy agenda they have had for years which includes taxing banks and withdrawing fossil-fuel subsidies for miners.
The build-up to the start of the new Parliament on Tuesday has been marked by megaphone politics. In the past fortnight, Malcolm Turnbull, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann and Treasurer Scott Morrison have all given keynote speeches ramping up the pressure over budget repair. Shorten returned fire at the Press Club, saying the government should adopt Labor's ideas.
Morrison turned the volume up to 11 by warning of recession and a $1 trillion gross debt, all while giving a frank assessment of the additional challenge coming our way posed by China's burgeoning debt and Beijing's lack of a plan to tackle it. Nothing moved.
Three months ago, the government was talking about there never being a more exciting time to be Australian. Now, it appears, we're all stuffed.
Same-sex marriage
And maybe so. It appears politics in this country, ever since the hyper-partisanship of the Abbott era, has settled on a pattern where wounding the other mob is the prime aim. The best way to hurt the government is to stymie its agenda. To avoid this, the government needs to become more flexible, and fast.
Because to those trying to hurt the government, everything else is just collateral damage.
Take same-sex marriage.
Abbott never supported a plebiscite until he got the shock of his life just over a year ago when the party room revolted against his attempt to suppress all discussion of the issue.
Turnbull bitterly opposed a plebiscite until he rolled Abbott and had to give an oath in blood to both the conservatives and the Nationals that he would adhere to the party policy he inherited.
Labor never supported a plebiscite, neither did the Greens. Both argued before the election that it would be a waste of money and a five-week publicly funded campaign. Yes and No cases would only inflict mental cruelty on gay and lesbian people as it did in Ireland in 2015.
MPs should do their job and sort the matter out in Parliament with everyone given a conscience vote.
But Turnbull won the election and it is almost inconceivable that he can dump plans for a national vote. There are more than a few in the Coalition – and the number is growing – who support Turnbull ditching the plebiscite and just getting on with it via a parliamentary vote. But even the most optimistic among them accepts all hell would break loose and it would be line-ball as to whether Turnbull's leadership would come undone.
Yet this is now the scenario being pushed with Labor, the Greens, NXT and Hinch all stating they will defeat in the Senate the legislation to establish the plebiscite.
The aim, says one insider, is to force the Coalition to accept there can be no plebiscite and therefore settle the matter by parliamentary vote. It all promises to become very ugly.
The strategy has split the same-sex marriage advocates inside and outside Parliament and that plays into the hands of the gleeful opponents, just as it did in 1999 when buffoons split and destroyed the republic Yes campaign by advocating a directly elected president or alternatives to the consensus model that was being put to a referendum.
Divisions over process
As Greg Barnes, the national campaign director for the Australian Republican Movement, said this week, the Yes case for same-sex marriage could similarly fail because of divisions over process and mechanism.
The clowns who destroyed the republic Yes case fooled people into thinking there would be another vote within two to three years if they defeated the model on offer.
"We're still waiting," said Barnes, 17 years later.
NSW state MP and Australian Marriage Equality chair Alex Greenwich has devoted much of his adult life to fighting for marriage equality. He doesn't like a plebiscite but accepts the government is bound to hold one. He believes the Yes camp should unite behind it and advocate as one for the case, rather than squabble. Instead, the cause risks falling victim to political partisanship.
More than likely, the Senate blocking the plebiscite will not result in a parliamentary vote because the conservatives will never allow it and Turnbull would be mad to try and push it. This will push the matter off until there is a change of government, whenever that may be.
As for the poor sods who just want to get married? Stuff them, just like the budget.
This is about wounding Turnbull.