The clamour over Holden this week drew attention away from the unhappy tidings received by other Australian workers

Tony Abbott came to power with a desire to slow down the news cycle and get politics off the front page. In many respects this was a worthy aspiration. The break-neck pace of national affairs doesn’t always serve rich, nuanced debate and reform-minded governments desperately need less disruption and clutter in the communications channels.

The strategy hasn’t worked because the operating environment has changed, and in my view, changed irreversibly. I think this profound structural shift is now clearer to the government than it was at the outset. It is clearer that while you can influence things at the margins, and on your good days control some things, the only viable day-to-day option is to dive in and swim in the white water, hoping you can maintain your direction as the bumps spin you around.

Mostly the white water is downside for an incumbent government wanting to communicate clearly with voters, or just hear itself think.

But there is upside as well. Just as the echo chamber amplifies every misstep, every left-field event and the ceaseless chatter of your opponents, the abundance of bright shiny objects also helps to obscure things you might want obscured. It also pushes significant events through the daily outrage cycle very quickly. A classic case of that occurred this week.

While the national affairs rollercoaster roared around the fate of Holden and amplified everyone’s feelings on an imminent post-industrial Australia, the Coalition set about unloading two pre-Christmas nasties – it proceeded to withdraw and redirect funds set aside for wage increases for childcare workers and aged care workers. Merry Christmas folks.

The development this week followed an earlier decision to get rid of the low-income superannuation contribution scheme, which provided a concession for workers on $37,000 a year or less. Despite the imperative of finding budget cuts to ensure long-term fiscal sustainability, the Coalition has retained the generous superannuation tax concessions for high-income workers, including of course, for politicians, some of whom are still on the rolled-gold pre-2004 parliamentary super scheme.

The practical effect of the policy shift is that Australia’s lowest paid workers will be punished for saving for their retirement – which presumably makes them more likely to end up having to rely on the pension. Quite apart from the obvious inequity, it’s poor policy. The roiling news cycle largely swallowed that one too – it pretty much sank without trace.

The government said the funds for the wage increases in child care and aged care needed to be redirected essentially because trade unionists were invading lunch rooms: unions were using the beach head provided by the previous Labor government to recruit new members. The government apparently objected to the fact that the funding related to a policy objective that low-paid workers achieve enterprise agreements.

A large body of research indicates enterprise agreements, which are negotiated by employers and employees (or their unions) in the context of the needs of the business and prevailing economic conditions, have the practical effect of benefiting the workers covered by them.

But the Coalition has long disapproved of collective agreements. This is an article of faith in the industrial relations culture war. When it comes to this issue, one man or woman’s better wage outcome or more sensible career structure is another man or woman’s “unionism by stealth”.

Of course, professional politicians don’t have to rely on assistance from unionists intent on inveigling their way into the member’s dining room, or their own pluck in negotiating directly with their employers over wages and conditions, or perceptions of their specific market value – they have the remuneration tribunal.

Periodically the tribunal is kind enough to give them a hand out.

Outside the economic seminar are the people actually affected by these decisions, people who do important work on which many Australians rely. Single mothers working two jobs to support their kids. I know one such single mum with a couple of adolescent kids who works nights in an aged care home in addition to her day job because she wouldn’t dream of taking a welfare benefit.

I know this woman voted Liberal at the last election because she liked Tony Abbott – as did a lot of workers that once would have voted Labor. Abbott, in fact, prides himself on his ability to communicate with this demographic. I wonder what these people make of the sum of recent events – if they can spot them through the daily fog.