As Bill, Chris and Jim took the podium on Tuesday to announce the Turnbull government’s decision to scrap the baby bonus, preserve the clean energy supplement, and wipe $6.3bn off the deficit, it seemed as if Bizarro Malcolm, Bizarro Scott and Bizarro Mathias had turned up to run the country.

Sometimes it’s hard to shake the feeling Australia is living in a Seinfeld episode.

After all, we did just experience an election campaign about nothing at all. Also, the campaign ran for eight weeks, making it seem as interminably long as Seinfeld’s final episode.

Is it possible Malcolm Turnbull is just a great big Seinfeld fan, and he’s enacting all his favourite moments while in office?

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It’s not a crazy theory. Consider that on the one-year anniversary of his prime ministership, notable Coalition figures such as Jeff Kennett, Peta Credlin and deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce struggled to identify a raison d’être for the Turnbull government. My Seinfeldian theory of Turnbull’s governing can’t be dismissed out of hand.

Dear readers, I do confess: I feel that, as a former premier, I should use a more substantial tool for political analysis than American sitcoms.

Then again, I’m not the one who borrowed Jerry’s friend Elaine’s campaign slogan to describe the Coalition government.

More proof.

But as the parliamentary week wore on, I started to wonder if I’d gotten the TV analogy all wrong. Maybe the current state of the Australian government wasn’t so much Seinfeld as Bewitched. Remember when, after four seasons, the show casually brought in a new actor to play the part of Darrin, as if its audience wouldn’t notice?

For example, this week the part of Tony Abbott was played by Turnbull. Turnbull really threw his all into the role of “Australia’s most inept prime minister” by trying his best to match Abbott’s Newspoll net satisfaction ratings. He also wasted a lot of political capital by introducing legislation to run Abbott’s plebiscite on same-sex marriage – the very process that Turnbull had decried just 13 months ago.

The part of Turnbull was played by Bill Shorten. Not only did Shorten announce Coalition government policy but he also took a Dixer in question time and junked the last two days of parliament so he could meet the Canadian prime minister.

(By the way, I think I speak for a large portion of Australia – men and women alike – when I say I understand Shorten’s decision. Given a choice of looking across the chamber at the Coalition frontbench, or across the table at Justin Trudeau, I know where I’d rather be.)

The part of the responsible and grown-up treasurer of Australia was played by Scott Morrison. He negotiated in good faith with the opposition to pass the omnibus savings legislation. He also resolved the superannuation debate that had been paralysing his government. I don’t know where the Coalition found this guy, but he’s a vast improvement on their usual treasurer.

And the part of Shorten was played by Tanya Plibersek. In Shorten’s absence she led the opposition in question time in what I judged to be an admirable effort.

For a brief moment it looked like Peter Dutton would be playing the part of the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz (you know, he’d discover that he really did have a heart all along). An ambiguous interview Dutton gave on al-Jazeera led to speculation on Thursday afternoon that the Australian government was about to announce that refugees on Manus Island and Nauru could go to New Zealand. For the first time ever, news editors across the nation said: “We really must listen to Peter Dutton’s speech at 5pm today.”

Turned out Peter seems to still be travelling on the yellow brick road, most likely lost somewhere in the haunted forest. At least he, unlike the asylum seekers, has a hope of getting to Oz one day.

Finally, Pauline Hanson played the part of that person who says: “Some of my best friends are Aboriginal.”

Sure, she can still divide a nation with her rhetoric (this time about Muslims) and fact-free analysis (this time about China). But 20 years after excoriating Indigenous Australians for their freeloading-off-the-taxpayer lifestyles, Hanson didn’t mention Indigenous people once in her inaugural speech.

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Hanson went even farther and embraced – literally hugged – Senator Malarndirri McCarthy, a Yanyuwa woman who spoke in her inaugural speech unflinchingly about the disadvantages Aboriginal people face and the need for constitutional recognition.

Who’s to say that in 20 years time Hanson won’t be hugging Senator Jihad Dib as she carries on attacking the menace of west Africans or whichever wave of new migrants next rolls her into parliament.

Maybe Bewitched got it right: you can change the cast, but the characters stay the same.

PS: If I’m right about the Seinfeldian theory, I sincerely hope Turnbull hasn’t seen The Contest. Go ahead, dear readers, and write your own punchline. I’m a former premier, for god’s sake. I’m trying to preserve some dignity here.