Labor's approach was simply tactical, designed to multiply Turnbull's political problems rather than achieve better educational outcomes. Then again, no one would pretend the Coalition's new approach to federal schools spending reflected any sort of intellectual conversion, whether by Turnbull or his party, to needs-based funding. It doesn't. The Coalition showed its real approach to education policy under Christopher Pyne, and mere adjustment to (Senate-imposed) circumstance hardly suggests conversion.

It reflects, rather, an equally cynical desire on the Coalition's part to neutralise education as an issue on which the public has seen Labor policy as streets ahead. It would be difficult to insist, as Tony Abbott once did, there was now not a difference wider than a cigarette paper between Labor and the Coalition on education. But the difference is not as great as Labor pretends. And the argument, about the policy if not its practical application, is over for now.

Liberal strategists, and tacticians, would be wise not to overrate the mere achievement of having policies in general alignment. If voters make choices based on the relative merits of Labor and the Coalition by education or by health policy, the contest, rightly or wrongly, is on Labor's ground, and it takes very bad play by Labor to lose it. It does not necessarily take fraud or deceit, even if Turnbull is convinced that his close run at the last election was because Labor misrepresented a secret plan to privatise or kill Medicare. He was later to admit, more or less, that his party had exposed itself to distrust on the issue.

All things being equal, the Coalition can win only by getting the battle on to its own ground, or by luck of events or by persuading the electorate that Labor is not to be trusted, even (or particularly) on its pet subjects.

It's all very well to become Labor-lite in an effort to deprive Labor of some of its edge. But the Coalition will not going to win elections by pretending to be more Labor than Labor, more moderate, more focused on progressive policies, or less ideological.

Turnbull has disappointed many critics. He has frustrated those who expected him to be very different from Abbott. But it's important to remember that, for Abbott, fiscal conservatism, including debt, deficit and tax phobia, was always largely a pose. Abbott was always, at heart, a big-government man, with no particular hang-ups about interventing in the marketplace. Turnbull, a rich and successful businessman, may be more liberal in his approaches to social issues, but was always more the purist on issues such as the size of government, market intervention and the virtues of unconstrained capitalism.

Yet he increasingly leads a government no longer embarrassed about deficit budgets, high borrowings, conscious interventions in the marketplace over matters such as the submarine purchase, guarantees of a domestic gas supply, subsidising coal-mining infrastructure in Queensland, and public investments in railways, dams and, potentially, coal mines despite evidence that the private sector's reluctance to invest is because the business cases are bad.

Liberal Party legend, particularly as fostered by John Howard and the party's economic radicals, is that the really wasted years in Australian history were the Malcolm Fraser era. Fraser had big majorities and, usually, the numbers in the Senate. Yet he was always hesitant about using power, not least because he worried about further fractures to a national consensus after the tumult of 1975. The eight Fraser years saw the Coalition fail to tackle serious economic reform, the critics suggest.

Many of the party's conservatives always distrusted Turnbull's instincts, even if (or when) they thought him their most marketable leader. They fear he might go mad and impose same-sex marriage and a republic, or some other heresy. But Turnbull has, by now, shown little temper or initiative for socially progressive causes. Yet whether because of an obstructive Senate, or popular passions and polls, he has stripped the government of any radical or reforming Liberal zeal.

Like Fraser, he has become a market interventionist. He has increased regulation, not repealed it. He seems to have lost his horror of government debt and fear of deficits. Free-market zealots, rugged individualists, and many in business who resent being second-guessed by bureaucrats and politicians question the point of having him, or a Coalition government. And the point of contributing to the party's coffers.

If the Liberals cannot prosper as Labor-lite, it is unclear Labor has much to gain be becoming even more Liberal-lite than it has become over the past 30 years. There is a good deal of evidence, most recently from Britain, that Labor need not move sharply to the right to achieve majorities. It must stand for something, something its traditional supporters can identify with emotionally.

It's hard to think of an occasion in which Labor won federally by a small-target policy, or by mostly adopting Coalition policies, or merely because a Coalition government became tired, incompetent and out of ideas. Labor itself lost office on each of those accounts. But to win it, it must provide the public with reasons to vote for it.

Just as Labor tends to benefit when everyone talks about health or education, it seems at a disadvantage recently if people talk about the economy, national security or boat people.

Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen deserves a good deal of credit for his efforts to make the economy an issue that actually works for Labor. But he needs to cope with lingering, if inaccurate, perceptions that the Rudd and Gillard governments were wildly profligate. Mercifully for him, he is being assisted by Scott Morrison's lack of authority, the economy's stagnant state and the government's seeming incapacity to fire it, and the Coalition's drift towards Labor-lite policies.

In 2007, Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan made the economy work for Labor as an issue and even succeeded in persuading voters they would be more conservative on spending than an increasingly desperate Howard government. Such impressions were gone by 2013, but it is far from clear that voters have forgotten Abbott's serial betrayals of his fiscal promises, or that they prefer the supposed stewardship or steadiness of Turnbull and Morrison to the prospect of a Bill Shorten-Bowen regime.

On national security and on boat people, Labor policy is to be in lock-step with the government. It can hardly win a vote that way, but its complete surrender may mean the issue is less controversial, and less likely to be the issue on which people cast their vote.

This does not mean the issues of a particular election must be traditional issues, or that they must reflect and illustrate a party's fundamental ideas (particularly about collective action and the market), or that either must accept battle on the ground chosen by the other side.

These are exciting times, even if Turnbull has shown little in the way of how he means to make us glad to be alive. In France, a newly formed party was recently wildly successful by being of the centre, freely borrowing ideas from both sides of politics, concentrating on seeming practical and results-oriented, open to suggestion and willing to debate aloud.

This time a year ago, Turnbull made very bad decisions in choosing the election's battlegrounds. He was lucky to survive. Since then, he has been able to purchase such achievements as he has mustered only by new, interventionist and very expensive government actions. Some of this, as in education, was designed to neutralise issues; in other areas, as in energy policy and his indulgence of some Nationals frolics, the purpose was to portray his party, under his leadership, as the party of energy, initiative and vision.

A good deal of work, and a large amount of public money, go into this process of marking out political battlegrounds, and seeking to prevent or contain battles fought on less favourable terrain. Turnbull was willing to spend an extra $5 billion on Gonski 2.0 (from an initial intention of $18.6 billion) to buy off Senate crossbenchers, effectively increasing proposed federal spending over the 10-year period by more than 25 per cent. It may well cost similar sums to neutralise health and hospital care as an issue working for Labor, and the same again in creating the semblance of an energy security policy and the appearance of action on climate change.

The policies and programs these involved may be good or bad, whether politically successful or unsuccessful. But they certainly unsound in budget arithmetic. And, ultimately, in government debt and progress towards a budget surplus. It was only six years ago that the Coalition was insisting that political virtue began and ended with fiscal responsibility, and tackling the so-called debt and deficit disaster.

The pace of some of the decision-making, the willingness to jettison unpopular and zombie policies, and the airiness about committing future money could make one think that Turnbull has an election in mind sooner rather than later. He may want for an urgent issue – other than some confrontation from within his own ranks – and may struggle, in any event, to gain any enthusiasm for a contest from within his own party, given the misjudgment he showed in calling an election a year ago.

But Turnbull must also sense that his own days are numbered unless he, and the Coalition's numbers, can jump out of negative territory and a long sequence of poor opinion poll results. His issue may well be an oblique one, and come from contention within his own party rather than the struggle with Labor and the Greens. It's hard to see how he could create such an issue from the Finkel report on clean energy targets (though that may be an issue that gives him some air). It is not unimaginable that he could fashion an issue from his new fervour for faux patriotism, perhaps in conjunction with some terrorism crisis, though he himself would have difficulties in persuading wary and cynical voters of his personal conviction on such matters. Sooner or later, I expect, same-sex marriage will again become a big issue, perhaps in conjunction with institutional abuse of children – another issue, perhaps, to antagonise or pay back the Catholic hierarchy.

With Parliament now in a recess until late winter, politicians on both sides will anxiously take temperatures in their electorates. Few will find voters positively galvanised behind either Turnbull or Shorten, enthusiastic about the state of the economy, or eager for some fresh social or political challenges. Our politicians need weight, not lightness.

Jack Waterford is a former Canberra Times editor. jwaterfordcanberra@gmail.com