By Mark Kenny
A handful of late wins could rescue the Turnbull government from itself, and from the attendant risk of a fraught, rebellious summer.
But progress and discipline must be maintained if the Coalition is to restore its equilibrium, recover the affections of voters, and make something serious of this term. Recent history tells us, these basics cannot be assumed.
As a calamitous 2014 wound up for the Abbott government, it just was possible, with a degree of squinting, to conclude that the colossal failure of that year's budget had sunk in - that the doctrinaire crash-through-or-crash approach, which had brought such vengeance down on the Coalition, would be replaced with something approximating normal politics.
Remember all that pre-Christmas barnacle clearing? Across the Coalition, hopes swelled. Maybe 2015 offered a new start - a second chance.
Remember the Abbott government's pre-Christmas barnacle clearing in the final weeks of 2014?Credit: Andrew Meares
This columnist did a spot of such squinting at the time, albeit on the (incorrect) assumption that Tony Abbott was not completely tin-eared and actually hoped to survive. But 2015 saw Prince Philip knighted; a spill without a challenger; some window dressing; Choppergate, and the same-sex marriage morass. Abbott's fall had been hard wired all along.
Turnbull's poll decline has been the striking feature of 2016, which is all the more remarkable for the popularity he began with and because he somehow survived an election on the way through. Nobody argues the slide has not weakened him. Unlike Abbott however, Turnbull is not loathed by voters, who are more bemused than betrayed. Assuming improved partyroom unity, Turnbull's real problem progress-wise next year, is the shallowness of his party's second-term agenda beyond the vastly unpopular corporate tax cuts that will be mostly blocked.
In the immediate term though, Turnbull can claim some actual success - passage of legislation through a Senate widely thought to be unnavigable. This was implicit in his preferment. The return to orderly, collective, cabinet government, based on persuasion and compromise where the former prime minister had favoured dogma and ultimatum.
This week's passage of the first of the two union-busting bills, Registered Organisations, is significant - more so internally. The harsher Australian Building and Construction Commission bill remains in the balance, but confidence is growing within the Coalition. Both of these are Coalition shibboleths. But securing them in law, will create them anew, transforming Abbott-era aspiration into Turnbull-era achievement.
The Turnbull government secured a big breakthrough with the US refugee deal.Credit: Andrew Meares
The big one publicly is the US breakthrough over Manus and Nauru - again the product of diligent behind-the-scenes persuasion, over noisy bombast.
The backpacker tax debacle is less ideal, but other successes have been had, including what Treasurer Scott Morrison calls real "reform" in superannuation tax concessions, netting the budget over $3 billion as part of some $20 billion in savings secured so far.
Turnbull's message to critics both internal and external, is to look to the cumulative weight of incremental progress. His hope is that budget repair can eventually be packaged up as his signature achievement even if it does little in the construction phase to dissolve a newly acquired reputation for dithering.
Turnbull's real problem progress-wise next year, is the shallowness of his party's second term agenda.