It looks like a small thing to stub your toe against, but let’s start here. A number of significant people said goodbye to politics over this past week – two former deputy prime ministers, the first Australian woman to be appointed deputy leader of a major Australian political party, Australia’s youngest female cabinet minister.

Substantial people. Julie Bishop, Wayne Swan, Jenny Macklin, Kelly O’Dwyer. Bishop’s mode of departure, with a statement on spec just after question time, ensured a captive audience, but the government roll-up for Swan and Macklin was paltry to put it mildly, and O’Dwyer’s guard of honour took time to reach critical mass.

In times gone by, people turned up from across the divide to bear witness when colleagues bid their farewells. It was the done thing because tapping that collective spirit is sustaining in a combat sport. But now, animus and partisanship pervade everything, sour everything.

There are a lot more important things to be worried about in politics right at the moment than whether or not parliamentarians can bring themselves to extend basic courtesies to one another. But failing to respect colleagues, and the conventions of the institution, does point to a bigger malaise.

Julie Bishop shows how lonely the political journey for women in the Liberal party is | Van Badham Read more

It suggests that at least some of the current crop of parliamentarians view themselves predominantly as partisans with knuckledusters – a bunch of freewheeling bros knocking back 15 beers at the uni bar before giving each other wedgies and heading out for a wider rampage – rather than the custodians of the institution of democratic politics.

If the wider imperatives of being a parliamentarian get obscured, a whole class of protagonists can drift into being strangers in their own culture, and mentor others to the same end. Bearings get lost. Bad judgments get made.

Lack of judgment was the recurring theme of a strange, brutal, chaotic, dumpster fire of a parliamentary fortnight. Come with me on a brief walk of shame.

Tim Wilson, the chair of the economics committee, was lucky to avoid a date with the privileges committee for not always conforming with the conventions usually observed by chairs of House committees (as the Speaker put it diplomatically) with his antics in the franking credits inquiry. But instead of chastising Wilson, or reflecting carefully on Tony Smith’s commentary, his colleagues gave him the verbal equivalents of high fives.

Mathias Cormann did not, until he was contacted by the Age, pay for an overseas holiday he booked with a mate who is a party donor and office holder and the recipient of a lucrative government travel contract from the finance department. (Cormann insists he played no role in awarding the contract.)

The finance minister said he didn’t notice when the $2,780 that was supposed to be charged to his credit card for the Singapore holiday, wasn’t. Explaining how this could happen, he said there was so much travel on his credit card that it was hard to keep up. This latter point was a bit strange given ministers, according to checks I’ve made this week, don’t routinely book flights on their personal credit cards.

Mathias Cormann booked holiday flights directly with Helloworld chief executive Read more

The sun set on Cormann’s bad day, then it rose on Joe Hockey’s bad day, when an email turned up in a Senate estimates committee suggesting that same mate Cormann had booked the holiday with could whistle up a meeting, pronto, with the American ambassador and former treasurer, because, “Hockey owes me”. (Andrew Burnes, chief executive of Helloworld and mate of Hockey and Cormann, denies he ever used that locution, and Hockey says all proper protocols were followed).

Michaelia Cash has put in so many bad days it’s hard to remember when her last good day was. This week police and prosecutors gave evidence suggesting the minister’s decision not to give a proper witness statement was a factor impeding their efforts to lay charges in an imbroglio that began when her office tipped off media outlets about impending raids on the Australian Workers’ Union headquarters.

Perhaps, even more bizarrely, the minister who used to be responsible for the federal police, Michael Keenan, also declined to give a proper witness statement to assist them with their inquiries. Wrap your head around that fact for a minute then ask the question that automatically suggests itself to any rational person: should either of them still be ministers? Why, pray tell, are they still there?

Persisting with poor judgment, and implicitly, with responsibility, there was also the small curiosity of why Scott Morrison ducked almost every question he was asked about Hockey and Helloworld in question time on Thursday, hand balling them through to Christopher Pyne. Why is prime ministerial responsibility intermittent? It really wasn’t clear why.

What is clear is this: the past fortnight has been a rolling demonstration of freewheeling and fecklessness. The worst of this is the behaviour alienates people from their politics even further, and the wider that representation gap becomes, the harder it is for governments to do anything that needs doing.

That’s what I really care about – that corrosive Catch 22. But given where we are in the political cycle, I’m also obliged to consider what this all means for the looming election contest.

Michaelia Cash accused of 'no shame' in declining to speak to police about AWU raids Read more

Two things. The backroom brains trust of the government will tell you every day of chaos or ministerial misjudgment is a day where the Coalition doesn’t inch out of the massive hole it has dug for itself. I also suspect at least some of this recent carnival of chaos is resonant enough to be memorable.

Projecting to the world as if you believe there is one rule for you, the political class, and another rule for everyone else, is a lethal gesture in the current political climate.

But despite all the lead in the saddle bags, a number of government folks are actually daring to hope at the moment.

They hope the sonic boom on border protection, never mind the facts and the fine print, can peel a couple of points off Labor at a time when the contest would naturally tighten, and they hope boats is an issue that can corrode and crack the unity the ALP has exhibited during this two terms in opposition.

Scott Morrison will also have something to say on climate change imminently, and even if whatever is unveiled doesn’t make sense, the fact that there’s something to sell will please the Liberal MPs currently getting hammered about the government’s monumental, unbelievable, inexcusable idiocy in this space every time they knock on a door.

Labor has also had a wobbly start to the election season. The opposition has set the political agenda for most if not all of this term, but that hegemony in agenda-setting has been tested in the opening months of 2019.

Internal disquiet triggered a backdown on mortgage brokers in Labor’s banking royal commission response. Resolving what to do on the medical evacuations bill was difficult. Defending its position against the truthy onslaught from the government on border protection is also difficult.

Nine facts about the medical evacuation bill Read more

By supporting the medical evacuations bill, Labor has sent a signal to its own supporters that it is defaulting more on the progressive side of the ledger, and that looks to have stirred up elements of the traditional, right-leaning working base who evidently fear Bill Shorten might suddenly tilt progressive on the Adani coal project as well, in their minds, sinking a putative Labor government.

Various unions are rumbling about coal jobs in central Queensland, and how Shorten needs to protect them, which is both a thing, and a proxy fight over strategy.

In my first weekend column for the year, I referenced a live debate inside Labor about whether a southern states strategy could win the coming election, rather than the usual rationale, which is all electoral roads lead to Queensland.

There is all the usual talk about, and genuflections to, Queensland, but both of the major parties believe that what happens in Victoria – the most progressive state in the country – will determine the next government of Australia.

If Victoria swings decisively for Labor as it did in the state election last year, it is very hard for the government to make up sufficient ground elsewhere to hold onto power.

That’s why, pretty shortly I reckon, we’ll be hearing from Morrison on climate change.