When Scott Morrison took on the prime ministership just over two months ago, I pointed out he was a political leader on the clock with only limited time to convince voters the government wasn’t a complete debacle, post all the bloodletting. Now we’ve bumped a little down the road, it’s reasonable to take stock of what we see.

In the spirit of generosity, let’s begin with an internal view. Despite the government’s profound political challenges, Morrison’s capacity to make quick decisions, without incurring too much blowback from people previously inclined to view every advance of Malcolm Turnbull’s as a personal insult, is viewed with something like relief after the long internal siege against the former prime minister.

Colleagues know Morrison doesn’t intend to die wondering, and that confers a certain level of comfort.

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Externally though, the view is more ragged. Polls suggest voters are willing to give the new bloke a go, but the trend is relentlessly negative for the Coalition government. So Morrison has no choice. He’s got to keep blasting forward, with velocity, hoping for the best.

But government by blasting doesn’t always line up with the national interest, and what’s emerging really isn’t pretty. Three case studies are illustrative.

We can start with that extraordinary kite flying in the run-up to the Wentworth byelection, when Morrison thought he might follow Donald Trump in moving Australia’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Key officials didn’t know the putative shift was coming until the last minute, and it’s clear from evidence before Senate estimates this week it would have been optimal to have them in the loop.

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Morrison didn’t just mimic Trump’s policy, he mimicked Trump’s style in the execution – foreign policy as “hold my beer”. The world already has one Trump. Does anyone think we need another one?

Then there’s energy policy. Even casual observers of politics will have picked up that the Coalition is in a muddle on climate change and energy policy. The debacle is epic, and entirely self-managed.

It pays to remember that this whole mess started with the government thinking it would be fun to give the then South Australian premier, Jay Weatherill, a kicking about his errant wind farms. I wonder how fun that seems now that the Morrison government has bequeathed itself political responsibility for bringing down power prices noticeably before the next election (good luck), and keeping the air conditioners on over the coming summer. Less fun, now, would be my guess.

In any case, the new energy minister, Angus Taylor, is progressing a bunch of ideas. There are problems with a few of the ideas, but for now, let’s highlight just one.

The government wants investment in new power generation to boost supply and bring down prices. No problem with that, it’s perfectly orthodox. But because some projects struggle to get finance, government involvement is now proposed.

Now our story gathers pace. Taylor wants to determine the scope of that government involvement within three weeks. Not a long time. Assuming he can cook up a settled process in three weeks, the minister then wants expressions of interest by January. That’s a handful of months.

Remember these are potentially large generation projects with long operating lives, costing many millions of dollars, requiring (one would hope) proper due diligence on the part of proponents. Can anyone imagine why this has to be rolling by January? Could it have something to do with needing a verb prior to the next election?

Taylor has also held out the prospect that the government could indemnify a new coal project against the risks of a future carbon price in the event a coal project emerges among the expressions of interest. Indemnifying the project removes the risk of a carbon price stranding the asset.

Now the Israel foray was disconcerting, but this one is an absolute doozy. Don’t get bogged down in the technicalities of indemnities and carbon pricing and stranded assets – let’s just cut to the chase. Depending on the project and the terms, taxpayers are potentially on the hook here for billions.

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I repeat, it is us, the taxpayers, carrying the risks. It’s not Taylor, or the banks, or the proponents. We wear the costs associated with any bad bets made on our behalf, and the government is clearly trying to cook this up pre-election in order to bind a future government.

If you are not yet sufficiently alert and alarmed, here’s one more case study.

If you’ve been watching the debate around getting at-risk children out of detention in Nauru in recent weeks, you’ll know that in the run-up to the Wentworth byelection, Morrison put potential resettlement in New Zealand on the table provided the parliament passed a bill stopping any back door re-entry into Australia.

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This was a difficult condition for refugee advocates, Labor and the Greens to contemplate, because the bill in question is over the top, but out of a growing sense of alarm about human welfare, and internal pressure on party leaders, all of these groups inched forward to outline how this might be possible. Given the toxic politics around this issue, the advance involved risk for all of them.

Just for the record, Labor’s conditions were straightforward: we’ll contemplate passage of your bill if you guarantee people on Nauru will go to New Zealand, and if you amend the bill to ensure “no backdoor entry” only covers backdoor entry from New Zealand. On the face of it, rational proposals.

But then Morrison – having invited the discussion – suddenly switched course. New Zealand was off the table, and Labor was completely outrageous to raise it, because the government already had a perfectly good plan to remove vulnerable children. Peter Dutton, who had been not only sotto voce but actually invisible in the run up to Wentworth, was back waggling his finger censoriously at the thought criminals across the dispatch box.

The reverse ferret was breathtaking at two levels. There was the implicit bad faith, given Labor came to the table at Morrison’s invitation. Then there’s the palpable sense of making things up as we go along, which would be fine, perhaps, if this was an abstract tactical skirmish, if there weren’t actually lives in the balance.

Perhaps the Coalition being all over the shop will be a transient thing, a function of the difficulties of these two terms in office, compounding and cascading, but if it isn’t, we’re in some bother, because a party of government is acting for all the world like it’s struggling with the responsibility.

Looking ahead, Morrison has more challenges. The government has lost its majority in the lower house, and the crossbench is working out how it will flex is muscle.

Barnaby Joyce is still on a “look at me” rampage, which is deeply problematic for the Liberals. Barnaby 2.0 remains in prospect, and if that happens, it will be a clarion declaration by Queensland Nationals that it is now every man for himself, which is exactly what Morrison doesn’t need.

The prime minister doesn’t need more defenestration, and an obvious public gesture of panic. He also doesn’t need Joyce to give crossbenchers a bulletproof excuse to support a motion of no confidence in the government in the event that question comes to a vote on the floor of the House.

The government has been counting on the Queensland maverick Bob Katter to be its safe harbour in a hung parliament storm, and that concept is terrifying enough, but Katter is also on the move himself. He’s clearly turning an eye to his own electoral fortunes by distancing himself from Fraser “final solution” Anning.

Some in the government think Katter’s decision to dump Anning is a public gesture of contrition to help shore up Labor preferences and union support for the next federal election, which Katter will likely need in order to hold on.

Now what that all means, and how this story ultimately plays out in the event we ever get to no-confidence territory, right now remains anybody’s guess.