Even before he was officially installed as the new Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese went north this week to perform a ritual mea culpa to Queenslanders in the wake of the federal election campaign.

"We need to acknowledge, firstly, that we lost the election," he said.

"We need to talk to people who have worked hard for us for the cause of Labor. But we also need to talk to people who wanted to vote Labor but who chose not to; particularly those who were thinking very closely of doing it. All the opinion polls showed that people were thinking of voting Labor.

"But of course we know that in the end we simply didn't get enough support. So I'm here; it's no accident I'm here in Queensland as my first stop."

But after several media outings where he was, understandably, peppered with questions about the Adani coal mine (since Labor's position/s on the mine were regarded as so damaging in the campaign), Albo expressed just a teensy bit of frustration.

"Our policies, frankly, are academic at this point in time," he told reporters in Caboolture.

"[The Government's] policies actually matter — they're the Government. They don't have an energy policy. Ask them what their policy is.

"What's their policy on new coal-fired power stations? Some of them say that's what they want here in Queensland. Why aren't they being held to account? Because [it's] not just Scott Morrison — this is what Peter Dutton had to say on March 14, 2018: 'We've got taxpayers' money to spend'.

"The question is whether the Federal Government should be building a coal-fired power station. I don't agree with that. I don't think we should be."

Mr Albanese has a point — not just about Adani, but in general. If Scott Morrison's job in this term of the Parliament is to run a better government, it is Anthony Albanese's job to switch the political focus to the Coalition.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 1 minute 31 seconds 1 m 31 s Albanese says he will look for areas of agreement with the Government

What is the Government actually going to do?

The usual factional what-ho of choosing a new Labor frontbench this week has provided plenty of fodder for a media coming down from an election campaign.

But if you think about a lot of the other reporting this week, it shows a continuing focus on what Labor thinks about policies — for example, what it will do about tax-cut legislation when it comes back to Parliament — and not quite so much on what the Government is actually going to do.

Sure, Labor's position on passing tax cuts for higher income earners — which don't take effect for a couple of years — will be a significant one when the new Parliament meets for the first time next month.

But there are more immediate questions about where government policy goes during the next couple of years, on the economy, on energy, on climate and, now, on religious freedom, for starters.

Mr Morrison acknowledged to the first meeting of his party room this week that, whatever the political hoopla, the numbers in the Parliament remain finely balanced, and not that much altered.

As of Friday afternoon, the AEC currently has the seat count at 77 to the Coalition and 68 to Labor (compared with 76-69 at the last election), with a couple of seats still undecided.

"We shouldn't stop there," he said.

The Prime Minister's message was about acting in a way during this Parliament that would entrench its hold on government next time, noting there were "many other areas of Australia" where "we should be able to build the Coalition vote and secure future victories".

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 14 minutes 13 seconds 14 m Scott Morrison announces his new ministry

Economy wobbles and expectations

The tricky bits for the Coalition will be the same sort of tricky bits it faced before the election, even without Tony Abbott to warm things up internally.

Chief among them is that the economic outlook is still uncertain — which has ramifications not just for its election pledges of economic feel-good, but also the budget.

On Tuesday we will get a reminder of that when the Reserve Bank considers whether to cut interest rates to historic lows, a decision the markets seem to think is fairly certain.

That will raise obvious questions about how wobbly the economy actually is, and should, more importantly, feed a debate about the weightings being put on fiscal and monetary policy to deal with that.

There is also an issue for the Government about the expectations that may have built up, particularly in Queensland, about its interventions in both the coal mining and energy markets.

Having attacked Labor so hard as being anti-coal and anti-Adani, what are the limits on the Coalition's potential interventions here — both in terms of assistance to new coal mining projects via way of infrastructure investments, and in a new coal-fired power station?

It trailed its coat ambiguously on these issues during the campaign, backing, for example, a feasibility study on a coal-fired power station, but not really making it clear whether it was supporting a government-subsidised — or even built — power station.

A name change isn't a big shake-up

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister was admirably focusing this week on improving the delivery of basic government services when he outlined the restructuring of his ministry.

But just how big a change the Government will actually deliver here is a moot point.

"We will also be establishing a new organisation called Services Australia, built on the Human Services portfolio," the Prime Minister said.

"Services Australia will pick up its lead from a similar organisation established by the NSW Government called Services NSW, which I think has been a very important reform in NSW and made dealing with government much easier."

Great. But a summary of changes to what is known as the Administrative Arrangements Order — which spells out which portfolio has responsibility for what — lists the renaming of five departments.

According to the order, the new title for the Department of Human Services is Services Australia: to date, all that seems to have happened is a name change.

DHS was created in the Howard years as a transaction agency. Departments like Social Services and Health would concentrate on the policy while the DHS ran the interactions between citizens and government.

It does not have a happy record. Other bureaucrats have rather unfortunately been known to refer to it as the Department of Sexy Fingers (as in "they f*** everything they touch").

A child support system, the government online portal myGov, the welfare payment infrastructure payment project, Centrelink telephone services, IT systems for Veterans Affairs and the National Disability Insurance Scheme have all had some unhappy histories, some subject to Audit Office reports.

History suggests that a much more considerable shake-up is required than simply changing an agency's name.

Whether a near-death experience will prompt a government that has overseen some of this unhappy period to address the problems more effectively is the big question.

Laura Tingle is 7.30's chief political correspondent.