The Budget passed through parliament this week, in case you missed it.

So did something called the Family Assistance and Other Amendments Bill 2011, whose innocuous-sounding moniker belies its sinister double identity as the Australian Labor Party's principal weapon of class warfare.

Do you remember the tizzy we had, immediately post-budget, about the Government's decision to freeze family tax payments for families on $150,000 or above? It was as though the Government had announced it was going to remove the second child of these families.

Newspapers railed against the injustice and doorstopped anyone driving a Subaru Forester. The Opposition empathised like crazy. Tony Abbott was of the view, at the time, that the decision amounted to the Government's declaration of "class war".

"I am instinctively against these budget cuts to families," he said.

"Why is this government always targeting people who want to get ahead? Why is the government against the aspirations of people?"

Since then, Mr Abbott has managed to bring his instincts under control. The family tax payment indexation freeze cleared both houses effortlessly this week, with no attempt at substantial amendment from the Opposition beyond a token and doomed bid to "note" that the freeze would cost families money and had not been mentioned to voters at the last election.

The omnibus budget bills also went through without amendment and with bilateral support, including the bit which allows the Australian Government to increase the foreign debt ceiling without explaining why.

So - last night - did something called TLAB-5, which turns out not to be the name of Treasury's in-house Kraftwerk tribute band but rather the Tax Laws Amendment (2011 Measures No. 5) Bill.

TLAB-5 incorporates a whole lot of other stuff that the Coalition huffed and puffed about and sort of gave the impression that it would oppose, like the repeal of the dependent spouse tax offset, and the changes to fringe benefit tax treatment of cars.

"This idea that women who aren't in the workforce are just kind of powdering their nose and going to tennis parties every day I just think is dead wrong," said Mr Abbott when the dependent spouse rebate changes were announced.

But last night, his colleagues voted it through with the rest of the changes, asking only that the vehicle FBT provisions be reviewed in a year.

(The private health insurance rebate means-testing legislation, which the Coalition is opposing, is still before the parliament.)

There were a couple of reasons these events did not generate much excitement within the media. First, there was fresh Abbott posturing to report: the promise of a plebiscite on the carbon tax, a plebiscite that was every single bit as illusory as his vague undertaking to the Australian public to oppose the family tax benefits freeze. Second, there was a fresh round of Rudd/Gillard angst to chew over, with the approach of today's "Sackiversary".

For all that the consensus these days is that Julia Gillard is hamstrung by the circumstances of this hung parliament, the reality is that parliament has very little to do with her day-to-day problems.

Of the three big issues she nominated a year ago today as her main priorities to sort out - boat arrivals, the mining tax, and carbon pricing - only the last is principally a matter on which parliamentary numbers are a problem.

In the 43rd parliament so far, 151 bills have been passed. Not a single bill has been rejected. The Prime Minister's problem, one year into it, is not so much that she faces a disobliging parliament. It's that Australian political debate has almost entirely disengaged from the two chambers that are supposed to be its home.

The perception of an anxious, uncertain Prime Minister - shadowed perpetually by the man she deposed a year ago - now dogs everything the Government does.

Even egregious and continued inconsistencies from the Opposition leader do not seem to interrupt this perception. Even the plain truth that Kevin Rudd would have about as much chance of winning a leadership ballot in the ALP right now as he has of winning Masterchef does not dent it. Even a Budget that waltzes through the parliament and a previously unimaginable agreement on the NBN that is signed with Telstra does not ease it.

And of course, before you all remind me: Yes, the media has a massive role in all of this. Lindsay Tanner's argument that conflict always wins higher page placement than consensus is quite correct.

But as ye sow, so shall ye reap. And one of the reasons that Julia Gillard cannot escape the pestilence of intrigue and instability that envelopes her is the brute truth of what she and her colleagues did one year ago. The unease at the core of the government is no media invention; anyone with a pair of eyes can spot it.

Short-term measures, like the sudden disposal of a leader, carry long-term consequences; perpetual lack of peace is one of them.