It continued in this vein in question time – an utterly hysterical bit of political overkill that tried to turn the government's mortification over the fact that, on the face of it, the Deputy Prime Minister shouldn't be sitting in the Parliament – into a Labor conspiracy, because someone in the ALP dared to ask someone in New Zealand to check up on citizenship requirements.

The overkill only added to the sense that the government really doesn't have a clue about political strategy, and how, under pressure, it falls to pieces, rather than finds a path through one of those grin and bear it phases of politics which its own rhetoric suggests is underway.

After all, the government keeps telling us it is confident that Barnaby Joyce's position will ultimately be supported by the High Court, which means the current unpleasantness will all go away in a couple of months. It just has to weather the storm.

Instead, it carries on like a bunch of hysterics and, almost like clockwork, also managed to lose a vote in the House of Representatives.

Is the normal business of government able to carry on in these circumstances? Well, negotiations in the Senate over media reforms – which feel like they have been going on for years – reached a new point on Tuesday when One Nation was given the nod by the government to go out and announce it had done a deal to give conditional support to the government's reforms.

The conditions include what can only be seen as both some intense political payback by a minor party damaged by ABC's Four Corners and by questioning on Insiders which helped undo its Western Australian election campaign, and of more concern, an entrenchment in the political system of a commercial assault on the ABC by the private media companies.

It's not clear the One Nation amendments will ultimately succeed – other crossbench players remain concerned and are still trading. But if the One Nation amendments get up, there will be a star chamber inquiry challenging the rights of the ABC to exist and an obligation on the broadcaster to reveal its employees' remuneration.

In the meantime, the government has allowed itself to look like One Nation is setting the terms of the media debate.