For the Turnbull government these days, ineptitude comes in many forms, success in few. One of the latest examples where its performance has baffled the dwindling number of its supporters and brought smiles to the faces of its opponents is the decision to let Centrelink's computers loose on Australia's least wealthy and most vulnerable citizens in the weeks before Christmas.
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Far worse for this government is the look of the thing: the politics are just terrible. Mr Turnbull has made heavy weather of explaining why big business needs the substantial tax cut foreshadowed in the last budget. Complaining about a lack of revenue while cutting business taxes is difficult to sell. Even the former treasurer, Peter Costello, has come out against the idea. The failure to ensure that some very big businesses pay tax at all undermines the government's argument further. From a different perspective, the Centrelink debacle –– squeezing single mothers, students and the poor – undermines it further still. Unfairness is combined with incoherence.
This confused and confusing performance will suggest to many that Mr Turnbull has no credible program which the public is likely to support. And his robotic cabinet appear to have been taught all they know about politics by a computer - possibly the same one which is still busy calculating poor people's Centrelink debts.