Last week we saw a prime example of the difficulties Malcolm Turnbull faces when he tries to do something good. On Tuesday, while he and the education minister, Simon Birmingham, were getting ready to announce a big overhaul of school funding that would finally have the government embracing a progressive funding model, his predecessor, Tony Abbott, was doing his best impersonation of Kevin Rudd.

As Rudd was apt to do whenever Julia Gillard was set to make a major announcement, Abbott posted a photo on Twitter to divert attention. It was of his appearance at the offices of the IPA, and depicted a scene so pathetic you could almost detect from the faces present a befuddlement at the life choices they had made that led them to such a sad position.

For nearly 75 years @TheIPA has tirelessly made the case for free speech and Western values: https://t.co/lbXCWVGQzp pic.twitter.com/yP1h3KQG2H — Tony Abbott (@TonyAbbottMHR) May 2, 2017

The IPA is a thinktank that exists to talk up white western civilisation, deny climate change and argue for small government – low taxes and even lower welfare and services. It was its type of thinking that was behind Joe Hockey and Abbott’s first budget, one so lacking in political and policy intelligence that it ended Hockey’s political career and resulted in Abbott going from being prime minister to a backbench MP reduced to attending lame morning teas.

The next day, Abbott continued his sniping on radio as he complained that the school spending proposals had yet to go through the party room and that “at this stage it’s hard to see that any of this extra funding is specifically tied to better academic outcomes and better student performance”.

He’s Tony, and he’s here to help.

Since taking over the prime ministership, Turnbull has for the most part embraced the hard right wing of his political party to the extent that there was barely any difference between his and Abbott’s prime ministership.

You could argue he needed to do so, that his power was so weak he had to placate the rump who support Abbott, who believe the IPA makes some good points, who see welfare recipients as bludgers, and who think we need to protect our glorious western civilisation from Muslims and anyone who does not follow our “values”.

But such a strategy has proved about as popular as the smallpox inflicted on indigenous populations by those glorious western civilisations.

And so last week we saw signs of change, an embrace, to use one of Turnbull’s favourite phrases, of the “penetrating glimpse of the obvious”. Turnbull has seemingly realised that to cling to the 2014 budget is to cling to political death.

Last week the government leaked that the zombie welfare cuts from that budget, such as a four-week waiting period for going on the dole, are to be dumped. It also looks set to unfreeze the Medicare rebate to doctors. And most crucially, it embraced the funding model proposed under the former ALP government by David Gonski.

It appears Turnbull has grasped that despite what groups such as the IPA and the hard-right rump in his party would have us believe, Australians actually like well-funded and fairly provided government services.

The schools funding reform package will result in a much better targeting of commonwealth funds than was ever proposed or considered by the Abbott government.

Is it less money than the ALP would have provided? Yes – the ALP would say it’s lower by $22bn over 10 years, although that figure appears less than certain at this point.

But there is no getting around the fact the funding will now be better targeted – a smaller share of the money to the schools in the wealthiest areas, and a bigger share going to the poorest areas. And it is 180 degrees away from Turnbull’s idiotic idea of last year for the commonwealth to pay for private schools and states to pay for public ones.

Perhaps there needs to be a bigger total amount of money, but at least we are on the way to having a fair distribution – freed from the Gillard government’s foolish, but at the time politically necessary, promise that no school would be worse off.

It certainly is not perfect, and as with any policy we need to await the details to see the full impact. As the Mitchell Institute’s Brownyn Hinz for example, notes, while it is all very well to talk about needs of schools, assessment of those needs “should also take into account the different starting points and learning growth of student populations in different schools”.

There are those who will suggest Turnbull and Birmingham have wedged the ALP and also flummoxed the unions who campaigned for the Gonski funding model. Personally I couldn’t give a stuff. I really don’t care who enacts progressive policies, so long as they are enacted!

But of course one policy doesn’t make a government progressive.

Last week as well, the government announced cuts to higher education and changes that will have people earning less than $52,000 paying up to $1,290 more than they would have previously, and all students paying more for their degrees.

Similarly, while the government is to spend more money than it would have on schools, we are yet to find out how it is to be paid – Birmingham only said “the budget will show clearly how that’s going to occur”.

The cuts targeting welfare recipients remain, as does the ending of the 2% “deficit levy” for those earning more than $180,000. And there appears little sense of any moves on housing affordability that will affect capital gains tax or negative gearing.

The weeks around the budget are always as much about media management as they are about policy. Last week, with the announcement on school funding coming straight after and thus somewhat burying the cuts to higher education, the government certainly was trying to create the impression of a good-news budget.

But unless the government has decided that ongoing funding for schools is good debt, someone is going to have to pay, and who does and how they do will help determine whether this shift towards progressive policy is anything more than just a brief flirtation away from the rightwing rump of Turnbull’s party.