Christopher Pyne’s cheat sheet to help him practise keeping a straight face while answering obvious questions about the government’s Gonski backflip (tough ones like, ‘Isn’t this a giant backflip?’ and ‘Didn’t you call the Labor model unworkable and not fit for implementation?’) makes for amusing reading.

And a po-faced Pyne duly delivered the answers, revealed by my Guardian Australia colleague Daniel Hurst, with aplomb worthy of Comical Ali declaring imminent victory for the Iraqi army even as coalition troops advanced into Baghdad.

The answer he really wanted to give is at the end of the document, where Pyne asks himself; “What else are you doing for schools?” and answers himself, “We don’t believe that money is the only element in better educational outcomes in Australia … We want a robust curriculum and better teachers. We want to ensure that parents and principals have a greater say in how schools are run. These are the things that are proven to improve education outcomes for students.”

But the Coalition is struggling to control the political conversation as it had hoped to, or to change the topic to the things it considers important. And ever-so-slowly it is realising it may not be able to.

The Coalition’s first tactic to achieve the change was a bit of political shush, that early “nothing to see here” strategy where ministers ventured only infrequently from their new offices and, when they did, began every utterance with a reassurance that they were being careful and methodical and purposeful about their new jobs, before scuttling back inside.

No doubt they were, but the strategy foundered somewhat because stuff kept happening.

Bushfires that started conversations about the long-term impacts of climate change, spy stories that got people talking about the limitations of intelligence gathering, politicians’ entitlements stories that dulled the new government’s clean sheen, data that blurred the pre-election suggestion that under the Coalition the economy would just whirr back to trend growth, company closures and downsizing that raised concerns about jobs – stuff that would have happened no matter who was in power but which rerouted the political conversation in unpredictable ways.

Add to that mistakes – like the government thinking it could cut money from schools funding without anyone noticing, and opposition parties who keep opposing things – and the methodical way the Coalition wanted to end to the year (abolish the carbon and mining taxes, enlist the many-starred general to stop the boats, set up the big ticket reviews – the commission of audit and inquiries into the financial sector and competition policy – and then start soaking the fruit for the Christmas pud and basting the turkey) is turning out to look quite dishevelled and disorderly.

This appears to have prompted a second tactical response – the “look over there” manoeuvre – to regain control by trying to change the topic of conversation.

Pyne is on comfortable, and probably more popular, ground talking about autonomy for school principals, better training for teachers and the overwhelming importance of phonics, and this is where he is trying to steer things. But with education ministers and parents now on hyper-alert for any reduction or long-term redirection of funding, changing the conversation is not likely to work all that well either.

Similarly, there were many in the Coalition who sought to deflect attention from Guardian Australia’s spying stories by trying to start a fight they were itching to have anyway about the role and remit of the ABC.

Both Guardian Australia and the ABC took the decision that publication on the Indonesian spy story, with all requested redactions on actual national security grounds, was in the public interest. Abbott himself acknowledged that “plainly it was a story”. The prime minister and the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, asserted the ABC had made an “error of judgement” in partnering with Guardian Australia to run and “amplify” the story, something that has also been done by many other media organisations around the world. (It is unclear how the amplification would have been appreciably reduced had Guardian Australia run the story on its own and the ABC had then begun following it ten minutes later.)

But the “look over there” argument was nevertheless run by those who tried to use the ABC’s decision to run the story as evidence the broadcaster should be split up, have its funding reduced, or in some way be prevented from competing with newspapers in the world of online news. (This has been a long-term bugbear of News Corp, although Fairfax boss Greg Hywood has said he’s not fussed and expects the ABC will continue to disseminate news with whatever technology is available.)

It seems, so far, that this diversionary tactic isn’t working all that well either. Despite the best efforts of the right-wing commentariat there appears to be no popular revolt against the “behemothic” ABC and no sign yet that the prime minister is shaping up to restrict its charter or cut its funding. And there is still much discussion, across the many channels of modern communication, about the balance between intelligence gathering and privacy when a country engages in spying.

Another problem has been the necessary gear shift from the slogans of opposition. Treasurer Joe Hockey had to concede the Greens were not always “economic fringe dwellers” when they agreed to do a sensible deal with him to get rid of the ceiling on the national debt, and that such arrangements are not, as the Coalition asserted when Labor was in government, always “grubby”.

Environment minister Greg Hunt, unable to shake the habit of three years of opposition, had a go at trying to blame the Qantas job losses on the carbon tax, but Abbott had already conceded the airline’s woes could not be fixed by a single “magic wand”.

The Coalition’s new reality is that in the modern media world political conversation is more difficult to control than ever before, and in government the messages that must be conveyed are irritatingly, sound grab-defyingly complex.

The government is not rushing in to promise taxpayer funds to struggling manufacturers until it is sure they have a long-term future and a sustained commitment, for example. It is not immediately jumping to intervene in the aviation industry because Qantas is finding it difficult to compete. But it has yet to find a way of explaining its stance.

The slogans don’t work any more, the shoosh didn’t either, and with many competing media voices the effectiveness of diversionary tactics is limited. The simple truth is it takes time to communicate difficult messages and long-term plans through the daily commotion, even with a cheat sheet at hand.