The last question time of the year was a bizarrely abrasive affair given the lofty sentiments exchanged between Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten, just an hour before.
Both had given warm end-of-year speeches in the house bringing colleagues and each other to a certain misty eyedness, and laughter too.
But come two o'clock there was unfinished business.
Through bad management more than bad luck, Turnbull was in the hot seat over his predecessor's insanely steep backpacker tax. With just hours to go in 2016's legislative year, there was gridlock. Turnbull faced the virtually unthinkable prospect of wrapping up the year's deliberations leaving a 32.5 per cent tax for tourist workers on the statute books and set to start in 2017.
Farmers bodies saw ruin. Growers were apoplectic. The Nationals oscillated between hubris and cluelessness. Crossbenchers became cross gooses. Something had to give, but what? Treasurer Scott Morrison had publicly drawn a last/final line in the sand at 15 cents in the dollar. He had boxed them in.
After multiple demands from multiple opportunists for a tax rate of either 19, 15, 13, and 10.5, any policy rigour had long since abandoned the field as the viability of a whole section of the economy got sucked into the ego-vortex of party pride.
So when Morrison drew a chair at the Prime Minister's table for a word in his leader's "shell-like" ear towards the end of question time, hopes rose.
Hallelujah. The Greens – a strangely overlooked bloc of nine Senate votes – had approached Finance Minister Mathias Cormann in the red chamber, proposing to rescue the government, rescue growers and their regional economies, and stitch up a smart win for themselves. In the end, the Greens would salvage a win for everyone bar a couple of shambolic crossbenchers, oh, and Johnny taxpayer.
Richard Di Natale's offer was the kind you can only make to a distressed seller: The government got to stand by its 15 cents – but only as the headline figure. In practice, the backpacker tax would equal a rate of 13 per cent (once more generous super treatment was factored in) – the same as that proposed by Labor and some crossbenchers. Di Natale, aware that the Coalition would pay anything to avoid the ignominy of defeat, even filched $100 million for Landcare programs.
This fig leaf was announced an hour later putting a positive punctuation mark on a political year that might be labelled Malcolm Turnbull's annus mediocritus.
The denouement displayed the rough and smooth of Turnbull's modus operandi: the imperative to inch ever forward to prove that the 45th Parliament can work, that he alone can make it work.
On the face of it, this is a welcome change.
But the devil is always in the detail. As the fine print of the backpackers' tax deal reveals, any account would be incomplete if it portrayed all such compromises as the shining victories they are presented as.
The even bigger deal of the week, from the Coalition's standpoint, was the Senate's passage of the Australian Building and Construction Commission bill.
A Coalition shibboleth, the ABCC had been a double dissolution trigger. Achieving it was thus a litmus test of Turnbull's leadership externally, and of his right-wing bona fides, internally.
So spirits ran high when it finally passed on Wednesday morning.
Two points in mitigation: First, Turnbull had to give away central elements of the ABCC thus substantially declawing the authority. Contrary to conservative hyperbole, the CFMEU will not be kicked immediately off building sites and straight into jail. Moreover, union-friendly enterprise agreements that contravene a new anti-union building code, will have a two-year phase out. Legal protections and judicial oversights that had not been proposed originally were also reverse engineered.
This leads to the second, somewhat astounding point. These concessions would have secured the ABCC's passage prior to the election. Think about that. Even the old Senate crossbench would have passed the amended ABCC bill – had it ever been offered – and thus the whole double-D drama could have been avoided.
These points aside, it's also true to say the ABCC is better for the Senate's amendments – less draconian, more accountable.
Next year, Turnbull wants his Employment Minister Michaelia Cash to double-down on this achievement and get some other liberal workplace reforms up and running.
In store is a "fresh wave" of union-busting policies arising from the recommendation of the ultra-divisive Dyson Heydon royal commission and the Productivity Commission review into industrial relations.
This is red meat to conservatives, and Turnbull knows it. In the absence of big company tax cuts, which remain a pipe dream, a second stage IR fight should keep them focused.
Even if what is finally achieved ends up being somewhat more mild than promised.
Mark Kenny is chief political correspondent.