The Abbott government has been in power 686 days and, in the wake of a turbulent half year capped off by the Bronwyn Bishop expense scandal, it is a valid time to ask a question that is often debated online and among political scientists. Is this the worst federal government ever?

I'm talking here about the effectiveness of the Abbott government. Can it pass legislation? Perform administration? Do Australians judge it to be effective? I'm not trying to make value judgments about whether it is a morally "good" government or whether its policies are good or bad (readers will have their own views).

To work out how effective the Abbott government has been in terms of legislating, I'm drawing upon data prepared by Nick Evershed​ for The Guardian two years ago that I've updated with the Abbott government's performance. This method takes all the Commonwealth of Australia Numbered Acts and assigns them to a government based upon the act's date of assent. It then counts total acts for each government and divides them by the number of days it was in office to arrive at a rate of acts per day that accounts for different lengths in a government's tenure.

This isn't a perfect measure because a bill might be introduced under one prime minister and passed under the next; and a lot of legislation is routine, technical amendments. This approach also values quantity over quality and doesn't measure how important the legislation was or its impact. But it does show one key performance indicator we would expect of a government: that it can pass legislation.