The Abbott government has stopped the boats, for what that is worth among some of its constituencies, and for what it has cost, which is something different. The social, human and moral cost will, I expect, haunt this government, the last one and future governments for years to come, but that is not yet a matter of votes, for or against. Parliament has not yet abolished the carbon tax – but the new Senate may well do so. The government has tried to resolve the problems, as it sees them, of the budget, the deficit, government debt and overreach of government, but that remains an unfinished and by now unpopular agenda.

But the government's big problem is that it has yet to devise a convincing moral, social and economic purpose for being in government. Or a plan into which its current actions and messages are said to fit, or a light on the hill, or some vision of an ideal society, that represents its goal.

Just as importantly, neither Tony Abbott nor the other senior message deliverers – particularly Joe Hockey – has yet articulated, or more importantly encapsulated – the reflexes, the instincts and the tendencies by which they will approach fresh problems, whether at the personal, community, national or international level. The people do not as yet have a "feel" for this government, and a good guess about how it will respond to events. Abbott has been many things – if yet remarkably disciplined and "on-message" – but his is a complex personality. With him, the electorate does not yet feel generally comfortable, nor do they invest or imagine him with a character and characteristics that are thought predictable. In different ways, the electorate developed a feel, certain if not necessarily comfortable, about Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, John Howard, and prime ministers before, and this uncertainty about Abbott matters.

We know that sometimes political parties succeed because the electorate is uncomfortable or uncertain about the character, reflexes or predilections of the leader of the opposition. Mark Latham and John Hewson might provide examples. But generally the character who matters is the leader of the government. But while the electorate may well have doubts about the calibre of Bill Shorten, he is not an unknown or unpredictable character. Tony Abbott and the Coalition can get only so much traction from reviving the supposed horrors of the Gillard-Rudd governments, or blackening the character of Shorten or other opposition (or Labor movement) figures, with or without tame royal commissions. Anyway, voters have come to think, partly thanks to the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption and partly thanks to the obvious sophistry and prevarication of Abbott whenever he has been in strife, that most current politicians are rogues who will use political necessities to excuse dubious behaviour.

No one knows – and nobody could confidently predict – what legislation will pass the new Senate, or what Clive Palmer and his followers will do, individually or collectively. This is not because Palmer is erratic or does not know his own mind. To the contrary, he is a wily operator with a long background in politics, including populist politics of the type he is playing at the moment. Distractions, flimflam and inconsistencies are a deliberate part of the style. But it would be wise to assume that he knows, more or less, what he is doing. The much more interesting question is whether those who must deal with him and, at the end of the day, must make deals with him, know what they are doing.

Labor, for example, must be praying that Palmer and his partners will ultimately relent and let through the legislation creating a $7 co-payment with Medicare. If the legislation succeeds, a competent Labor could probably win the next election simply on a promise to abolish the payment, in much the same way that the primary reason it won the 2007 election was by promising to abolish Howard's overreach – his WorkChoices legislation. No doubt Labor would campaign on other things besides, but "saving" Medicare could come to symbolise almost all the unpopular entitlement decisions of Abbott and Hockey. All the more so when it is joined, as it will be, to the "broken promises" attack.

No amount of sophistry, tergiversation or prevarication, least of all by Abbott, will persuade voters that Abbott has been faithful to his election promises, about the maintenance of spending and policy on health, education or social welfare generally. He squanders valuable energy even trying. He would be far better admitting he has strayed and begging forgiveness, with a plea of necessity, insisting that the problems of the economy and the budget required him to do so, as a matter of simple responsibility.

But even then he has a problem, because he and Hockey and Mathias Cormann have not been convincing in persuading people about the necessity argument, the dire state of the economy, or the priority that must be accorded to getting things back into balance. This is not because the public does not broadly understand the economic state of play, or does not broadly appreciate and agree with the desirability of equilibriums. It is, rather, that they have not been persuaded that the situation is in any way critical, or that it justifies the measures which have been put in place to resolve them. Still less that the solution resolves the problem, or shares the burden equally or equitably.

Voters make such judgments partly on their estimate of how the solution impacts them, their family and their immediate community. But they also consider a wider impact, whether on groups within society, or on areas of public policy (such as health, or science) and by reference to some of the things by which they judge the nation fair minded and fair dinkum. The criticism that hurts the government, and that worries the backbench, is the suggestion that ministers simply do not understand how widely matters such as higher education, health and aged-care costs and services from state government involve very large proportions of the electorate, including key constituencies of government. And that they have lost touch with many of the ordinary problems of individuals, families and communities. Moreover, in the most populous parts of eastern and southern Australia, there is nervousness about the state of the economy and about job security. Wittingly or not, some ministers seem to suggest that they don't know, or that, if they do, they don't care much.

The more that Joe Hockey talks about the supposedly ever-widening circle of people receiving welfare benefits, for example, the more he should remind himself that he is talking about ever-widening constituencies of voters, not least in the fabled western suburbs of Sydney. The more he talks about lifters (as opposed to leaners), producers (as opposed to users), and givers (as opposed to takers), the more he shows that he identifies himself so strongly with the former that he can be accused of being against the latter. Even by his own estimate (or Mitt Romney's) that is "dissing" half the electorate.

The government is becoming more obviously frustrated and annoyed by the way the electorate does not seem to understand and appreciate what it is doing. That is dissing the public too. A big part of the problem is that ministers are talking to, but more importantly, listening to, the wrong people. The government has the absolute and apparently unwavering support of News Ltd newspapers, and of the shock jocks. It basks in the open adoration of these true believers – believing, unwisely, that it has earned this applause and that it will always be there.

To many in the public, Labor has the better of the debate not only because it would not be so tough, but because the public doesn't accept that it is necessary to be too tough. The public will punish Labor if it fails to recognise the need for some medicine, but is quite happy to accept and endorse more homeopathic doses than Abbott is offering.

Politicians, on both sides, have invested great effort in trying to persuade the political classes to understand and agree with them. Nor have they ever had much trouble getting the financial institutions, national and international, to agree on economic virtue. But the language with which the politicians address such audiences does not much help them with the broader public. Still less do the arguments. The broader public overhears the chit chat of the insiders. The virtue being preached is not its own self-evident reward to the average voter. The self-help language might be more successful in appealing to the entrepreneur or would-be small business man or woman. But even many of those are not as persuaded as the government seems to imagine of the idea that wealth and fulfillment is available to anyone with initiative who wants it, once the budget is in balance, bludging pensioners, students, school leavers and sick people taken off the public teat, and environmental controls are ripped up.

Two decades ago, it was the Coalition – most particularly John Howard – who worked hardest to persuade "real" voters that the wisdoms and consensuses of the intelligentsia were to be despised. The Abbott government spends too much time basking in the applause of obvious special interests, and its own brand of luvvies, and too little listening to the very type of ordinary Australians for whom it has pretended to be there.

Even then its problems are much magnified because it gives so little sense of purpose to the austerity it has failed to persuade people is necessary. Tony Abbott could say, for example, that it is critical that he get the budget back intro balance so that national disability care, when we introduce it, on schedule, is even bigger and better adapted to need than was originally planned. Or to extend, rather than constrict, his proposals about parental leave into an enveloping vision about helping families with childcare and other burdens or incidents of parenthood. Or about aged, or health, self-reliance. None of these would be terribly wide visions, by themselves at any rate. But they could give the public some context, some reason to understand that the government is making hard choices now so that good choices can be made later on. The government could pretend that we are saving, not for an undescribed rainy day, but for a generally agreed worthwhile purpose.

A good many backbenchers would be delighted. But then, of course, a good many true believers in the small government message would not. The purpose of the push after all (increasingly the defining purpose of so many centre-right governments that the aim in view is not about staying in power, including by the dispensation, when necessary, of extra goodies) is, rather, about weaning the public off its appetite for public goodies from government. It is about lowering public expectations of what government can do, and should do, in the economy, so as to build or support a stronger society in a stronger nation. It is about making the public know that it could have the same goodies (and if they are wealthier, even more goodies) if there was a marketplace creating choice in goodies, rather than the doling out of bureaucratic, and bland (and equitably shared) public goods and services. The end point is a smaller government. Operating at less cost to the taxpayer. And, of course, with lower taxes. Lower taxes for everyone, even if the biggest beneficiaries are those who, at present, pay (or ought to pay) the highest taxes.

But that's hardly a light on the hill. For the greater proportion of the electorate, it is, at best, a lantern in a railway tunnel; warning as much as beckoning.