So what did we learn from the Dunkley by-election?
The result — Labor has retained the seat but with a swing against it — can be called a draw between the two major parties.
It’s far from the endorsement of Anthony Albanese’s cost-of-living-fighting stage three tax cuts the Prime Minister would have been hoping for.
But it also indicates that voters still don’t think warmly of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. He has a lot of ground to make up before people think of him as prime minister material.
The concerning reality is that if a swing of this size was replicated across the nation at a general election, it would mean Labor would be forced into minority government.
We saw how that went last time.
The business of government ground to a halt as political paralysis set in. Every policy move was subject to horse trading and excessive compromise thanks to independents keen to exploit the opportunity to push their own barrows.
As former Morrison government adviser Andrew Carswell writes in The Nightly, some conservatives are licking their lips at the prospect of a Labor minority government. If they can’t be in charge, everyone should suffer.
After all, it was only the dysfunction of the Julia Gillard years that made the prospect of a previously unelectable Tony Abbott seem like not such a bad idea. Perhaps the same could work again to make either Dutton or whoever comes next appear more palatable.
But “such thinking is self-centred and reckless”, now even more so than in 2010.
“The trauma that a minority government would wreak on the Australian economy, jobs and the nation’s social fabric would be immense; far beyond the impacts of Gillard’s ‘Dumb and Dumber deal’ with faux conservatives Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor,” Carswell writes.
More organised, more astute and more ideologically-driven, the teals would make a far more formidable crossbench than the motley trio that was Oakeshott, Windsor and Bob Katter.
This term of Government has already seen a host of measures that make it harder to do business pushed through Parliament, chiefly Labor’s wide-ranging industrial relations reforms, described by the resources industry as “economic vandalism”. An onerous regulatory regime is already turning off international investors.
The prospect of what could be ahead of us if the teals hold the balance of power is worrying.
A little past the halfway point of the Albanese Government’s first term and policies from the Opposition have been few.
That could soon change, with Mr Dutton preparing to release the Coalition’s plan to add nuclear into Australia’s energy mix.
Mr Albanese and his Treasurer Jim Chalmers will also be searching for some new ideas to capture voters’ attention to include in the May Budget.
Let’s hope one side succeeds — for the national interest.