About a month ago, close observers might have noticed that the phrase “deep dives” had begun to appear in dispatches from Canberra. Since the election, we read, the Prime Minister had started to arrange these sub-aqueous excursions into certain policy areas. This was part of the reason we were not hearing much from the government.

Well, good – both on the process and the quietness. For the first time in a long while, politics seems to have returned to a pitch at which reasonable discussion of less prominent but still important issues can take place. The recent talk of expanding the role of pharmacists while restricting their effective monopoly on selling medicines is a case in point.

But at the same time, this talk of “deep dives” should point us towards one fact, and one question. The fact is: we are three months into this term and the government is still playing for time. The question is: what the hell was happening in the first nine months of Scott Morrison’s prime ministership?

The question is rhetorical: he was trying to win an election. Cue nationwide shoulder shrug. So bear with me while we jump to more recent goings-on, which at first glance seem entirely separate: last week’s interrogation of various senior members of the Labor Party by the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption.