Just look at the first Newspoll for the year. The figures for the Coalition are awful. (Given the disastrous summer break, maybe most surprising is the fact it is not even worse for the government).

But it is instructive to look at what is driving the poll numbers.

Labor has not gone anywhere on the primary vote over the summer, despite pension cuts, Centrelink debacles, or ministerial venality.

Voter disaffection

Its primary vote is stuck at 36 per cent, exactly where it was in December and only marginally higher than it was at the federal election.

Compare this with the position two years ago when the Coalition's primary vote was also 35 per cent, but Labor's primary vote was 41 per cent.

The 4 percentage point drop in the Coalition's primary vote since December has slid off to minor parties, notably One Nation.

It is often the case that, early in the election cycle, voter disaffection will park with minor parties.


But the black mood in the government reflects the uncertainties unleashed by the Brexit and Trump phenomenon: that the shift away from the major parties under way here for several elections will only grow into a complete splintering of the two-party system as early as the next election.

The Trump phenomenon highlights how the disconnection between voters and politicians has pushed politics beyond a left/right ideological split, though so many of our politicians still play out the tactics in just such an ideological divide.

Donald Trump's politics is built on tapping the sense of disempowerment among voters. Turnbull's problem is that his rise to the prime ministership was based on voters hoping for not just a shift back to the centre but a restoration of the old order.

The $11 billion question, as federal parliament returns, is what Malcolm Turnbull does about it.

Pulled from both the left and the right he has not been able to deliver on either of these expectations, and now confronts the additional challenge of how to appease the disaffected.

It does not bode well for a pretty year in politics.