When the then new Abbott government sooled the super-dry Productivity Commission onto Labor's union-friendly industrial relations system, the working assumption was that it would eventually recommend substantial changes to nourish the platform of a bold and successful administration proceeding confidently towards re-election.

But it hasn't worked out that way at all. Permanently underwater in a polling sense, the government has weathered a cavalcade of self-inflicted crises and has signally failed in its central economic messaging. Any courage it once promised voters is now detectable only as a faint echo.

Witness its response to the commission's more ambitious ideas on Tuesday. The PM could not wait to stress the "draft" nature of the report, nor its status even after it is finished as a report "to" government rather than "from" it.