No doubt most living under the Liberal umbrella, even Turnbull and Abbott, actually believe in an open economy in a way that traditional Laborites might once have rejected. But the Turnbull government, like the Abbott government before it, is remarkably susceptible to attack from both sides for what it does as opposed to what it says on open markets, economic liberalism, or even instinctive attachments to the idea of individual liberty and the least possible interference with it. One wonders what profit there is for it either in having pretend fights about the soul of the party, or in pretending that forthcoming election contests are going to be battles of basic ideas, ideals and approaches to government.

Turnbull is doubly exposed. Great captains of industry, and ideologues and apostles of neoliberalism are railing against a government they see as increasingly predisposed to market interventions. After a brief (and politically disastrous) venture into cutting subsidies to inefficient industries, cutting red tape and withdrawing from fields of interference in markets, the Abbott and Turnbull governments have gotten back to being an old fashioned activism, market interventionism, and pork barreling, the latter particularly through the National Party.

Whether propping up the South Australian economy, considering loans for Indian coal miners, stinging the big banks simply because one can, or effectively abandoning an obsession with debt and deficit, we now have a "mature" Liberal government on the Menzies, Holt, McMahon, Fraser and late Howard model. It is virtually indistinguishable from a modern Labor government on the Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard model.

If Turnbull can be accused of being Labor-lite and too pragmatic, Labor is accusing him of operating in the interests of the big end of town, and doling out tax cuts and concessions to the rich while grinding the noses of even the middle class. Shorten has devised attacks based on notions of unfairness, of unequal burdens and of decision-making dominated by ideologues.

This argument is not that the Coalition is over-wedded to market theory. It is that in practice it has not been creating an environment for free markets. Markets have been corrupted by increasing concentration of players, insider trading, the increased influence of lobbyists, insiders, mates and internationals, secretiveness rather than open and transparent dealings, and a breakdown of the institutions, the watchdogs, and checks and balances. This is not unbridled capitalism but nobbled capitalism; not free markets but captured ones.

The success of many of Australia's best known captains of industry (including Malcolm Turnbull himself when in business) has not come from full-blooded competition in a free marketplace. More often it has come from the dispensation of government favours such as TV and casino licences, telephone spectrum and privileged insider dealings in once-public real estate and enterprises. Despite the lip service given to small business as an engine room of growth and employment, voters increasingly perceive the private sector as dominated by a few giants in each sector, multinationals are perceived as not paying taxes or any attention to governments, and an ever-expanding, but ever less accountable finance sector.

This potent populism is more sophisticated than the Hansonite blaming unwelcome social and economic change on migrants, Muslims and vaccination. It may share the argument about the economy and government being too much of the insiders and elites, for the insiders and elites. But it implicitly asks for better free enterprise, rather than more restricted free enterprise. More free, and more transparent, less susceptible to inside deals and special influence, increasing concentration of market shares, and privileged access to decision-makers. One with powerful referees able to enforce real competition, to detect and punish uncompetitive or oppressive activity, and able to protect consumers and small players from abuse of power.

Labor also plays on popular job and wage insecurity, and how wage growth has slowed, threatening business and consumer confidence and dampening business investment. Even as a politically pragmatic government has sought to neutralise popular perceptions of cutbacks in spending on health and education, it has continued to pander to business and ideological calls for further deregulation of the labour market, tight wage restraint and cuts in public service numbers. There may be constituencies who see such conditions as creating national economic flexibility to take advantage of international market opportunities; there are others who are sullen, resentful and deeply insecure, not entirely able to be distracted by fears of an invasion of refugees, or of terrorists.

Is this then the right environment for a political contest focused on any sort of battle of fundamental ideas, or in support of a reduced role for government in Australian lives? Is the Turnbull personality and style the one to win such debates? Shorten is accused of being many things, not least in the ideas and ideals department, but he is not easily painted either as an ideologue, a conviction politician, or an old-fashioned socialist.

Or does going for the sensible centre simply mean being competent, if rather timid and uninspired? Fearful of changing much, lest one frighten the horses, waken enemies, or alienate existing supporters? This is government on the model of politics in the Australian states and territories, in which the primary argument is about competence rather than guiding philosophy, and about capacity to respond to events, local and international, rather than driving the society, the polity or the nation in any particular direction? It is boring government, very susceptible to complacency and corruption, ill-suited to the needs of a nation in a rapidly changing world in the 21st century.

And where is this sensible centre anyway? Is it to be taken to be somewhere in the middle of the oval, more or less half way between the "centre right" and the "centre-left " team, wherever they might be at any particular time? The assumption, for those who speak of such centre ground is that such a space, rather like a Bell curve, embraces the majority of an electorate inclined to weigh arguments on either side before adopting the one making the better propositions.

It is true, of course, that most who listened to, or read, Turnbull's Disraeli Prize speech were looking for nuance in the supposed struggle with Tony Abbott for the moral leadership of the party. Abbott didn't bite, nor did many of those who argue that the membership is essentially conservative and dry rather than socially liberal and wet. [Turnbull was, of course, addressing a British conservative party which has legislated for same sex marriage, supposedly the litmus test for moral conservatism in Australia.]

As Turnbull tells it, the natural inclination of the Liberal Party is towards freedom and the individual. "The Liberal Party stands for freedom or it stands for nothing. We … believe government's role is to enable citizens to do their best - and that commitment to freedom is based in a deep, instinctive respect for the dignity and the worth of every individual…

"Our opponents on the Left in their DNA believe to the contrary, that is, government knows best … our side of politics leans heavily in favour of freedom and the individual - preferring choice over prescription and freedom over regulation, always sceptical about the wisdom and the interference of governments."

That's a fairly conventional explanation of the fundamental differences said to exist between Liberal and Labor, even if, as Turnbull candidly conceded, the anti-collectivist instincts of non-Labor parties have to be seen within the context of their times. By modern standards, for example, the founder of the Liberal Party, Robert Menzies, was a big government man with no abiding faith in unregulated capitalism, and was, by today's standards, to the left of modern Labor on the value of interfering in markets.

Menzies had wanted to stand apart from the big money, business establishment politics of traditional "conservative" parties so styled of the right, as well as from the socialist tradition of the Australian Labor Party - the political wing of the union movement.

Turnbull quoted Menzies as saying: "We took the name 'Liberal' because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his right and his enterprise, and rejecting the socialist panacea."

"The sensible centre, to use my predecessor Tony Abbott's phrase, was the place to be and it remains the place to be now," Turnbull said.

Words such as left and right, conservatism or libertarian can be handy shorthand for parcels of ideas but there are definite practical limitations to their usefulness. Most voters are not closely engaged in political struggle. Study after study of the electorate over recent decades seems to suggest that popular expectations of what government can or should do for its citizens has not changed much - certainly not as much as changing styles and philosophies of government service delivery, or fiscal and social priorities.

Bob Hawke and Paul Keating embraced open markets, free trade and deregulation of the economy in the 1980s and 1990s. They received (for a time) the applause of the electorate for doing so, but there is little evidence that they actually converted their constituencies to economic liberalism. Rather they persuaded voters they were better equipped to govern than a coalition then bitterly divided and demoralised.

Labor and the electorate may have abandoned, as out of date, some old notions of bank nationalisation and command economies. But the evidence generally runs against the theory that voters came to love privatisation of old government business entities, or to delight in the opportunities, insecurities, uncertainties and supposed excitement of being subject to international economic headwinds.

John Howard, and, later Tony Abbott won elections handsomely from Labor governments. But voters embraced the Coalition rather more because they were tired of the other lot than they fundamentally changed their ideas about the proper role of government in society.

For good or for ill, the risk of Bill Shorten's perceiving a socialist panacea between the goalposts is about as remote as the chance the Liberals will again pick Abbott to kick off for team Australia.

The rise of populism, protectionism, economic nationalism and resentment of immigrants is in part a response to politicians having failed to take the population with them.

Labor may well be bunched ahead of the sensible centre of the field. My guess is that Labor and Liberal teams are jostling for possession in an area well forward of where most of the voters are located. That's assuming that the spectators are not watching a different game on a field far away.

Jack Waterford is a former editor of The Canberra Times

jwaterfordcanberra@gmail.com.