Illustration: Matt Davidson. A statewide ReachTEL poll published by Fairfax on Friday showed a 9-point swing to Labor which might be enough if it occurs in the right places. More likely is a close but honourable loss. That would be a solid performance for Labor in the socially conservative west, but in a two-horse race, coming second means coming in last. And just like the federal election last July, a Coalition win, no matter how thin, would feel like a great escape. Well beyond WA, the result will see morale either boosted or battered. At their best, political myths are unifying and motivational. But they can be harmful too, as the Hillary Democrats found out spectacularly last November.

Malcolm Turnbull, struggling in the polls, suddenly wants a mega-department in charge of national security. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Early last week I wrote about a dangerous fantasy gripping the Coalition. This was laid bare rather graphically when Malcolm Turnbull called reporters to a Canberra business to continue frightening the bejesus out of voters flirting with Labor's 50 per cent renewables push. The stunt was designed to show how jobs and business confidence would be smashed by expensive and unreliable electricity. But the PM's grave message sank under a Newspoll released the same morning showing his government's gentle decline had become a nosedive – a 10-point deficit after preferences on a primary vote of just 35 per cent. It was Turnbull's worst Newspoll and the eighth in a row showing him behind.

This is the political equivalent of trying to half-catch a cricket ball: you don't just drop the ball, you break your fingers for your troubles. His explanation? Tony Abbott's sabotage the preceding Thursday, which had been calibrated specifically to pervert the Newspoll survey. This not only strained credulity, but suggested that Turnbull actually believes his troubles are substantially down to Abbott's "shit-stirring" as one minister called it. So it's not his government's awkward support for penalty rate cuts, lower corporate taxes, the Centrelink robo-debt debacle, pension cuts, scrapped family payments, ministerial travel rorting, the jarring embrace of coal etc. etc. – it's Abbott. Delusions such as this can be deadly in politics. They stop leaders from confronting mistakes and altering course. The penalty rates position is a case in point – particularly as it is not even new – the Howard government favoured cutting weekend penalties in its WorkChoices policy. We know how that ended.

From where it is now, this is an argument the government cannot win, and Labor cannot lose. Yet it was manageable. There were really only two outcomes from the Fair Work Commission's long-running review of Sunday pay: No change or a reduction. Yet despite knowing it was coming for months, Turnbull's brains-trust were caught flat-footed by the ruling. Some degree of political cover might have been bought had the government made a submission to the FWC stating that while the government believes in the principle of lowering weekend/public holiday penalties, now is not the time with the economy sluggish and real wages growth sitting close to zero. Or it could have taken taken the muscular approach once the ruling was made, by arguing forthrightly for what it believes: cutting labour costs on Sundays will encourage businesses to open: higher margins = more trade = more jobs = winners all around.

Instead, the government has spent an entire week under a political blitzkrieg of 34 consecutive Labor questions, trying to pin Bill Shorten for undermining the independent umpire. Who cares? And no matter how loud it shouted, the absence of a merits argument was louder. This is the political equivalent of trying to half-catch a cricket ball: you don't just drop the ball, you break your fingers for your troubles. By Thursday, Turnbull was showing some signs of wising up to this problem, and by Friday, came closer to owning it, noting the changes will increase jobs, "create thousands of new opportunities for people to work, create thousands of new opportunities for small businesses to open and that is – that is the – that is always the objective." But the die is cast. Between the 330,000 age pensioners hit by the tougher assets test from January 1 and the 700,000 Labor says will lose penalty pay, there's a million people who have just gone materially backwards - this year. Loading Pretending these decisions are not pushing the Coalition vote down is perhaps the biggest delusion of all.

Mark Kenny is national affairs editor.