One of the joys of leading your party from opposition into government is the sheer abundance of juicy policy lying around. Low-hanging fruit, you might call it. Everywhere you look, there’s another specimen to be picked and devoured, no trouble at all.

“Low-hanging”, of course, because it’s easy to find. Want a policy to announce? Well, what was the former government’s policy on this? OK, let’s do the opposite. The honeymoons of new prime ministers are born of many things, but one of the least appreciated is the sheer ease of this exercise. Take the first few months of the Rudd government: Reverse WorkChoices. The apology. Sign Kyoto. Look at those polls!

Taking the leadership from a member of your own party, on the other hand, is devilishly difficult. The difficulty with reversing positions is, firstly, there are probably good reasons the leader before you rejected the alternatives, and, secondly, your party has for months or years been advocating existing policy. And so Julia Gillard set about delivering the revised mining tax, the East Timor solution, and the citizens’ assembly on climate change, only to find the reason the fruit was still dangling on the tree was because it was poisoned.

Which brings us to Turnbull, who, finding himself in a similar position to Gillard, took the opposite tack. Yes, he immediately flipped a couple of Tony Abbott’s simpler, stupider positions (lack of women in Cabinet, knights and dames), but he decided the big, difficult policies were too big and difficult to interfere with. Over the following 12 months he lost just as much skin as Gillard, but for an entirely different set of reasons.

Taking the prime ministership by force is a very, very complicated manoeuvre, that can leave you in an even more complicated set of circumstances. Which isn’t to say we should be feeling sympathy for the prime minister on this, the first anniversary of his successful challenge to Tony Abbott. It was his choice to do so, after all.

But all this does point to why the past few days have been more important than they might look. There are small but significant signs the next year may be different from the last.

At the end of last week, I wrote that this week would be very interesting, in terms of what it told us about Turnbull’s ability to keep the momentum of last week going. Last week, of course, the government showed for the first time since budget week that it was capable of a unified prosecution of a case, which led to Sam Dastyari’s departure for the backbench.

And so how has Turnbull gone this week?

On Monday, the government brought much of Question Time back to the Dastyari affair, in answer after answer. Turnbull wanted to keep morale high, to not allow his troops to forget his recent success so soon. It was the right choice. By yesterday, awkward segues to Dastyari were looking a little tired; today they felt like a John Farnham comeback tour. Turnbull’s tactics are getting better, but they have a way to go. (Fact check: Everyone loves Farnsy.)

More significantly, the government yesterday reached agreement with Labor on its omnibus budget savings bill. It gave ground on a couple of key measures, and allowed Labor to hold the first press conference on the matter. This is what government is supposed to look like: a willingness to make some short-term concessions for overall substantive gain, which mature politicians have confidence will deliver them a benefit in the longer term. It was good for Labor, too, allowing it to claim the “constructive partner” mantle, but more important for the Coalition.

Then today Turnbull introduced the plebiscite bill into parliament. Also today, Bill Shorten, who is now on his way to Canada, gave indications through the media that he would recommend his party vote against the plebiscite in the senate. If that holds, the plebiscite will not happen.

It is worth asking what Shorten is up to here. There will be no formal Labor decision for three weeks. Shorten has not made clear public comments about his own position. Why is he delaying?

The first answer is that he is playing politics. If Labor does block the plebiscite, then this may be the end of it as an issue in the parliament for some time. Of course Shorten wants to keep the debate, divisive in the Coalition, alive for as long as possible. This is childish and self-serving, but unsurprising.

The second answer, which I suspect is also true, is that Shorten’s position is not in fact final. An experienced politician knows that it is almost impossible to gauge actual reaction to a position until that position is final. This is one of the things that makes politics so perilous. And so Shorten is edging closer and closer, hoping that if there is huge opposition to his decision it will become apparent before he buckles himself in once and for all. In a more generous light you could point to his wanting to consult further. Could all of these things have been done earlier? Yes. Refer to first answer again.

If the plebiscite is blocked, as seems likely, this will be no bad thing for Turnbull. He will be able to say he wanted a vote but Labor stopped him – plus the issue will, to a large extent, go away. (Oddly, nobody seems really to want the plebiscite apart from voters. The LGBTI community, while not a monolith, seems largely opposed. Conservatives will be happy to see it fall, because it will mean no change to marriage laws right now. The left don’t want it.)

This week might not look like an obvious golden period for Turnbull, dominated as it has been by damning report cards on his first year. (Laura Tingle has an interesting exception here.) And yet, with the plebiscite debate almost exhausted, and genuine progress on a budget not universally hated by voters, this post-Abbott fortnight may, in hindsight, end up looking very good indeed.

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