In a barely noticed respite from last week's squabbling over cutting penalty rates, cutting company taxes, freezing the minimum wages and gutting section 18C, Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten publicly agreed on a couple of things.
One was Cyclone Debbie, which saw the two leaders squeegee flood water out of rain-deluged businesses in the post storm clean-up. The optics were good, and the shared intent even better, as Turnbull announced defence force assistance and Shorten called on Australians to plan holidays to the Whitsundays.
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Hands across the water. Literally. But because it preceded an abnormally combative question time, the pictures used in that night's TV bulletins highlighted their return to Canberra and to fierce parliamentary combat.
The other bipartisan moment was around a future Australian head of state. In something resembling forward progress, Turnbull and Shorten were among the 40 MPs and senators who put their names to a group which favours a plebiscite, and then a referendum, within the next four years.
But the last sitting week before the budget on May 9Â was not about the republic or cyclonic Queensland. Nor even the budget, bizarrely.
As the Coalition eyed the five-week lay-off, its politics went from pompous to puerile. Not only did it fail to get its budget narrative going, it actively eschewed the main opportunities the final sitting week provided.
Treasurer Scott Morrison waited until question 15 on Tuesday to speak at all. Traditionally, governments have used the pre-budget session to hammer their themes, setting out the fiscal and economic challenge and laying the groundwork for the "visionary" blueprint to come.
Not this lot though. Arrogance drips from their communications style even as their popularity sinks – now behind Labor 45/55 according to the Fairfax-Ipsos poll at the beginning of the week.
Dominating the government's thinking, apparently to the exclusion of everything but the pressing urgency of 18C, was its $48 billion 10-year enterprise tax cuts plan. As a strategy, given its support for a penalty rate cut and for keeping the minimum wage where it is, this left a lot to be desired.
Throw in the income tax cut coming for high-earners from June 30, when the temporary deficit levy ends (unlike the deficit itself, which is substantially worse than when it was applied), and the Coalition's priorities look as if they were designed to fail.
Turnbull had confirmed that irrespective of what happened to the enterprise plan, his 25 per cent rate for big businesses would remain core Coalition policy.
Yet so stroppy was Morrison that even on Thursday night as Finance Minister Mathias Cormann edged closer to a deal with the crossbench, the Treasurer refused to be clear.
Leigh Sales asked him four times if the full $48 billion policy would remain in the Coalition's platform. Four times Morrison dissembled.
It was a curiously weak commitment to a central reform, especially as negotiations were ongoing.
Politicians delude themselves that such word games are impressive. Arguably this kind of dull-thud politics has eroded public confidence and accelerated the drift to the margins on both the left and right.
The challenge for mainstream free-trade political parties is to wind down the sophistry and wind up the benefits of politics in the vast areas of overlap.
On Monday, Tony Shepherd lamented a lack of urgency among Australian voters over debt and deficit, singling out middle-class welfare for a major haircut. The dry-as-dust business leader acknowledged that national debt was modest when compared to many economies but warned it is growing. His point? Act now to contain spending, or more serious action will be required later – including confidence-destroying tax increases to balance the budget.
If this logic sounds familiar, it should. It is analogous to the warnings scientists have been delivering for decades over climate change. Act now when the changes are manageable or face dire consequences down the track, by which time the environmental damage will be irreversible, and the economic dislocation far greater.
From centre-right and centre-left, the electorate is being asked to take these warnings on trust, because, by definition, the worst has yet to occur. Yet trust, the critical element here, is withering. And it is hyper-partisanship, which specialises in creating doubt and negating a political mutuality of interest, that is doing it.
Should it be beyond the wit of the main parties to address these long-run challenges? Of course not. Especially as officially at least, both sides acknowledge both problems. Labor may not want to carve into the deficit as quickly as the fiscal hawks of the Coalition, but it is pledged to a balanced budget over the cycle.
Similarly, the Coalition claims to want action on climate change. It does not back Labor's remedies but could do much more within market principles. Yet neither gives an inch.
Even social reform is denied, as in the case of marriage equality, where even a vote is anathema when both leaders support change.
Is it any wonder politicians are on the nose?
It is time for a grand bargain to unlock the national-interest dividends of centrist, evidence-based policy.
Mark Kenny is national affairs editor.
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