It seemed such a good idea at the time: devote the first week of July purely to the fresh Senate, allowing the rookie crossbenchers to assert their brand new power over Labor and the Greens by happily and compliantly sweeping away the carbon tax and the mining tax before they quite knew what they were doing.

The House of Representatives wouldn't sit: all the lovely limelight would belong to the Senate, whose occupants are regularly ignored and who would thus, surely, be suffused with gratitude.

Happiness all round for the Abbott government, laurels for its senators and air-kisses aplenty for the blushing new inhabitants of the place.

It hasn't gone to plan. Students of history might have predicted it.