''Like so many of my Coalition colleagues, I came to the Parliament … a little sceptical of the Australian Public Service,'' he said. ''I soon learnt that nothing can be done by government without the hard work and the professionalism of the Australian Public Service and that the professionalism and the commitment of the Australian Public Service is absolutely second to none.'' It was soothing to some no doubt but, after Howard's ''long knives'' crunch down in 1996, which was so traumatic it even sent the capital's property market into shock, the wiser heads are studying Abbott's actions rather than his words. On this score, the evidence is already concerning, even if Abbott's tight messaging has been all about burning a new three-word slogan into the collective electoral psyche - ''calmly, steadily, purposefully''. There's a rich irony that the tranquillity Abbott's new mantra promises relies heavily on the fact there is no longer an impatient Abbott agitating from opposition.

Either way, voters will probably welcome the quiet. Footy finals are here and spring is in the air. Politics has had more than a fair go this year. Yet, like that duck gliding across the pond, Abbott's government only looks calm. The real action is happening under the water and it is tending to vindicate a warning made loudly and often by Labor as it drifted towards inevitable electoral defeat. Labor charged that Abbott was offering nothing but an anti-Labor agenda - that his would be a government of negativity, vengefully pursuing ''cuts to the bone''. Just 10 days after being sworn in, the list of agencies, programs and personnel being cut is mounting. The warning fell mostly on deaf ears. After years of overblown rhetoric and chronic failure by Labor, voters tended to regard it as fear-mongering in the ''you would say that'' category.

Yet, just 10 days after being sworn in, the list of agencies, programs and personnel being cut is mounting. The dismissal of three respected departmental secretaries and the announced departure of another - Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson - made front-page news on Abbott's first day and certainly set the hares running in the public service. Each of those severed had been identified with key policies seen as anathema to the new order even if they were merely doing their jobs. It was hard to avoid the conclusion that these were politically motivated assassinations. They are not the end of it either. The $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation had long been earmarked for closure and Treasurer Joe Hockey has already set to work on that promise. Ditto with drawing up the legislative instruments to axe the emissions trading scheme with its pre-emptory fixed price period or ''carbon tax'' and the minerals resource rent tax. The removal of both were central tenets of the Abbott manifesto. Other cuts, however, escaped the focused attention of voters before the election or have simply come out of the blue. They will tumble out in days or could wait until the spending audit that follows.

Taken together, they paint a picture of a government whose agenda risks being defined more clearly by dismantling than building - by what it is against rather than what it is for. There's the Climate Commission - run by Tim Flannery, who is loathed in Coalition circles. There's the Major Cities Unit and the Australian National Preventative Health Agency - the former has been scrapped, according to a source, and the latter seems headed the same way. It has been associated with campaigns against obesity and tobacco, regarded by some in the Coalition as elitist preoccupations. Also under a cloud are long-standing agencies such as the Institute of Health and Welfare and the National Health Performance Authority. The scale of the dismantling and the pace at which it is being done runs counter to Abbott's intended image of a government moving slowly and methodically in its early days. Yet the new administration has an answer for that too - a media blackout. After Christopher Pyne's now crushed ambitions to scrap university service and amenity fees, which threatened a major blue with the Nationals, ministers are to clear all media appearance requests with the Prime Minister's office first. Gone also is the presumption of disclosure after the decision to withhold information on boat arrivals and turnarounds at sea if they are attempted.

At his first press conference as Prime Minister, Abbott said he would not recall Parliament until he had a full legislative program, insisting the days of using Parliament as an expensive photo opportunity were over. Similarly, he said he would not be making press appearances unless he had something substantive to say. On Thursday, however, he did just that - holding a press conference in Melbourne that seemed to have no central purpose and yielded little in the way of new information. An announcement on the recall of Parliament was imminent, he said when questioned, but would not be revealed yet. Former Australian Stock Exchange and ABC chairman Maurice Newman would be announced, albeit later in the day, as the new head of the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Council - a fact already reported.

A Reserve Bank warning that self-funded superannuation funds risked overheating the property market and creating an unsustainable housing bubble was noted but the promise of ''no adverse changes'' to superannuation arrangements under this government would be honoured. Week two of the Abbott government was notable for two things - the continuing process of de-Laborising the government in form and personnel and its clear preference to keep those efforts secret. Mark Kenny is chief political correspondent. Peter Hartcher is on assignment.