So keen has Malcolm Turnbull become to appease his party's right wing that he is actually governing badly.

It's not what he promised. And at the start, it's not what he delivered. His early decisions were based on evidence. He examined the payoff from increasing the goods and services tax, then dropped the idea (to the consternation of some in his party) because the payoff wasn't there. He examined the tax treatment of superannuation, found it was an outrage, and (again to the consternation of many of his supporters) toughened it. Not these days.

The issue that set Cory Bernardi off was what appeared to be his brief embrace of an emissions intensity scheme. Late last, year the man Turnbull appointed as Chief Scientist identified an intensity scheme as the lowest-cost way for Australia to meet its emissions reduction targets. Dr Alan Finkel reported that the Climate Change Authority (whose chair and the majority of its board the Turnbull government appointed) and the Australian Energy Market Commission and the Australian Energy Market Operator had all found that, of the available options, allowing electricity producers to trade in intensity would do the least economic damage and cause the least disruption.

What they proposed is completely unlike Labor's emissions trading scheme and was always provided for in the so called direct action legislation introduced by the Coalition's Greg Hunt under Prime Minister Abbott.