The first big political messages for what will be a torrid year were out there for all to see this week.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison was in the Pacific, making perhaps the most significant rapprochement with Fiji in decades, and telling Vanuatu that we were reliable friends, no matter how friendly the Chinese might have been there lately.

There were agreements on everything from defence to football and, significantly from an economic perspective, Fiji's entry into the Pacific labour scheme.

Along the way, Mr Morrison had to listen to the complaints in the Pacific about climate change. But if you lead a party that finds it impossible to endorse a credible climate and energy policy, them's the breaks.

But for Australian political junkies, there was of course another implicit message in the PM's trip: no early election, thank you very much.

The Prime Minister was busy with the task of running the country and its international relations, and would keep doing so, was the clear point.

So many seats up for grabs

Federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten (left) and Labor's candidate for Forde Des Hardman are seen next to the Queensland Jobs Not Cuts bus in Logan, south of Brisbane. ( AAP: Dan Peled )

Certainly, the "early" election speculation (i.e. call it on Australia Day or even before) that had built up in political Canberra as it broke for Christmas has now faded, and most people seem resigned to the Government hanging on until the April budget and going after that, in the dim hope that something turns up to improve its electoral prospects.

The other big political message came from Opposition Leader Bill Shorten: Queensland.

It is true that Queensland, in recent decades, has often played a central role in federal elections.

But it is hard to think of a recent campaign where so many seats genuinely felt up for grabs by Labor, not just as interesting because of the One Nation vote.

Mr Shorten launched a "fair dinkum" bus tour of the Sunshine State on Thursday and will spend the next nine days heading north.

The electorates he is visiting are instructive as you start to get your mind around the looming federal election.

Mr Shorten is starting in the seat of Forde, which has been held by the LNP's Bert Van Manen since 2010. But the two-party preferred margin was sliced by 3.75 per cent at the last election to a vote of just 50.63 per cent in 2016.

Mish-mash of marginal electorates

The increasingly unhappy relationship between the Liberals and the Nats is likely to continue to play out. ( ABC News: Nick Haggarty )

The Opposition Leader then travels though Fisher, Wide Bay and Hinkler (held by the LNP on margins of more than 8 per cent).

Then it's back into much more marginal territory: Flynn, where Ken O'Dowd clung on to the seat with just 1,814 votes despite a 5.5 per cent two party preferred swing Labor, and Capricornia, where Michelle Landry's margin is just over 1000 votes.

Michelle Landry's margin in Capricornia is just over 1,000 votes. ( ABC News: Marco Catalano )

It's a mish mash of apparently safe and marginal seats, topped off with a likely visit to George Christensen's seat of Dawson, held with a margin of just 3.34 per cent, and Herbert, held narrowly by Labor's Cathy O'Toole.

The Opposition Leader argues he is visiting Queensland seats regardless of Labor's chances.

But he also needs to be seen up north, where the Government believes his personal appeal is the weakest.

Of course, many in the LNP blame the significant swings against it in 2016 on Malcolm Turnbull, and much of the pressure to remove the former prime minister was driven by nervous Queensland MPs.

So the dynamics of this election will be very different: the optics of a government that is clearly fractured and which, despite removing Mr Turnbull, doesn't seem to have landed in voters' minds in any clear philosophical territory that guarantees success in those LNP seats.

Aged care, banking inquiries a factor

As if to prove the point, Scott Morrison is also expected to spend next week in Queensland — though he will be starting his travels in the far north, rather than the south.

Federal Cabinet is also expected to meet in Queensland in the following week.

The Government's woes, however, will continue to be affected by the day to day business of government, or government failures.

There's the aged care royal commission and the massive fish kills in the Murray Darling, for starters.

We know from the banking royal commission that the way these things operate is that the major parties slug out the news from a royal commission as a straight forward blame game.

And the fact the Government has suddenly felt compelled to do something about the excessive use of chemical constraints on aged care residents — after horrendous footage on ABC's 7.30 report this week, and on the eve of the royal commission — when it has had official recommendations on this dating back 18 months shows the pitfalls.

Fish kill brings up climate change policy

The Murray-Darling fish kill invokes the Nationals' history on the issue of water — specifically that of Barnaby Joyce's time as water minister. ( Facebook: Rod Mackenzie )

It has sounded unpersuasive on the fish kill issue too, even if it is true that extreme weather and drought hasn't helped, and that the Murray Darling is an issue for both state and territory governments.

For the fish kill brings us into the territory of both climate change policy and the Nationals' history on the issue of water — specifically that of Barnaby Joyce's time as water minister.

And the increasingly unhappy relationship between the Liberals and the Nats — both in the pressure they have brought on the major Coalition partner to shift on both social and environmental issues, and in the increasing Nationals alarm at the declining fortunes of the Liberal Party — is likely to continue to play out, and in some cases be amplified, in the looming election.

Cathy McGowan has endorsed nurse and midwife Helen Haines to be her successor in Indi. ( ABC News )

Retiring, or resigning, Coalition MPs have left open the door to three-cornered contests in a number of seats (there is an agreement between the Coalition parties that they will not run against each other in seats where one has a sitting member).

That's brought the seats of Cowper, Indi, and Mallee into play.

Former independent Rob Oakeshott is running in Cowper; the Coalition will be trying to win back Indi from the independent vote of Cathy McGowan, who is retiring in favour of a candidate she and her Voices for Indi group have endorsed, Helen Haines.

There's a four-way contest for the traditional bellwether seat of Eden-Monaro, and there is still a formal question mark over whether former Abbott chief of staff Peta Credlin will run for the Liberals in Mallee, and whether the Nationals' Bridget McKenzie will run in Indi, making that a three-cornered contest, too.

The big political message of 2018

A quiet deal to trade off these contests remains possible.

The implications that all, or even some, of these seats would change hands in an election in which current expectations are for a massive national swing against a stumbling government do not seem large

But at the least they will require attention and some of the Coalition's exceptionally thin resources.

They will only highlight the tensions within the Coalition parties in the meantime.

And, after all, it was those tensions that were the big political message of 2018.

Laura Tingle is 7.30's chief political correspondent.