This year, I decided there were nine such issues: legalisation of same-sex marriage; dual citizenship of MPs; national energy policy; federal funding of schools; asylum seekers; the Victorian Parliament's legalisation of euthanasia; the Queensland state election; the rejection of Indigenous constitutional recognition as proposed by the Uluru declaration; and the Turnbull government's dogged refusal to countenance a banking and financial services royal commission before it ultimately capitulated.

Politics moves so quickly that, by now, foreign influence on Australian politics should certainly be added. Furthermore, the general characteristic of all these issues is that they are ongoing, not done and dusted.

Next year, legalisation of same-sex marriage will morph into a continuing controversy over freedom of religion, conscience and speech. A committee led by former Liberal minister Philip Ruddock committee, due to report in March, ensures this.

Section 44(1) of the constitution will be subject to continuing examination by the High Court as the Parliament refers more cases. Further by-elections and replacement senators will keep the conversation going and constitutional reform will remain on the agenda.

Despite Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's confidence that he found the answer in the national energy guarantee, the battle between the relative merits of coal and renewable energy runs deep and is highly ideological. Energy crises and household energy prices will ensure the issue doesn't go away.

The passage of the Gonski 2.0 school funding proposal might may have initially seemed to have been an unqualified victory in resolving inequities in government funding of education, but continued reviews will mean it is just a temporary halt in the long battle over the place of public and private education.

The Turnbull government has held the line on asylum seeker and refugee detention on Manus Island and Nauru, despite extraordinary community pressure, sometimes international, and often including non-partisan push-back from the highest levels of society. Any policy change is tightly linked to the security of Turnbull's position within the governing Coalition.

The Victorian Parliament's decision on assisted dying and the narrow defeat of a similar proposal in the NSW upper house are just the beginning of what will be a burgeoning national debate. This will expand the intensity of the state controversies onto the national stage.

The Queensland state election was of greater than usual national significance for a state election because it raised issues about the continuing decline of the major parties and deep divisions within the community. These urban-rural and ideological gulfs are taken up by diverse minor parties and local independents, and mirror similar developments nation-wide.

The latest rejection of Indigenous constitutional recognition must surely turn out to be just a temporary halt to this struggle. It is beyond belief that the shattered recognition movement will not rebuild itself and reshape its campaign.

The newly announced banking royal commission will become a most important arena for bigger struggles. The corporate world will struggle to contain or neuter it, while the broader community will take the opportunity to challenge the failures of yet another established and deeply flawed institution.

Like all politics, the major events of 2017 produced winners and losers and, taken together, a cumulative score emerges.

Over the course of the year, the federal Labor opposition continued to have the better of the government, though the gap may narrow as the year reaches its final days. Within the government, the Nationals, despite stumbling over dual citizenship, continue to have the upper hand, as shown on the banking inquiry. Within the Liberals, tensions continued, though the same-sex marriage outcome damaged the credentials of conservatives, including Tony Abbott. But they continue to hold sway, per Peter Dutton, over asylum seeker and border protection policies.

Within the community, distrust of government is still measured by steadily growing support for minor parties and independents. None of the bigger social institutions came away unscathed, either. Unions maintained a very low profile in the big community debates apart from industrial relations. Aid and international development groups have been submerged by the security-dominated international environment. Environment groups are struggling, too. The Indigenous community has once again been rebuffed.

Official church groups, already hurt by the on-going Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, were on the losing side of the euthanasia and same-sex marriage controversies. The churches were also damaged by the school funding outcomes. Meanwhile, their progressive wings have failed to convince the government to alter either refugee or international aid policies.

The business community has had the most mixed year. Tax cuts for the biggest corporates have stalled and there will now be a banking royal commission (although they have shaped it as best they could), as well as increased pressures against tax minimisation. Some of the energy sector has been berated by Turnbull but escaped essentially unscathed. Led by Qantas's Brian Joyce, big business embraced the community mood on same sex-marriage far better than the Parliament, in what may become a model of future corporate responsibility.

Those institutions facing increasing scrutiny next year may turn out to be professions – like law, accountancy, lobbying and financial advice – which often slipped under the radar when the failures of traditional institutions, such as business, unions and churches, were uncovered.

John Warhurst is an emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University.