Nor is it a communications problem, except in the sense (fervently believed in some quarters of government) that the electorate is too stupid to recognise the government's virtues and too susceptible to the opposition's lies. It's not the messaging, but the message. It hasn't taken, and mere repetition or repackaging won't do the trick. On central parts of what the government says it stands for, the public has thought about it. And it ain't buying. On a good deal of it, it simply doesn't believe it.

Nor should the hopeful take too much comfort in the fact that opinion polls, if consistently pointing to the government's failure, suggest a difference of only a few percentage points, sometimes two and sometimes up to six. Turnbull himself pointed to the heresy, saying (of similar polls about Tony Abbott) that the electorate had made up their mind about him and what he had to offer.

That Turnbull is somewhat ahead of Bill Shorten as preferred prime minister – a fact stressed by others searching for positives – is neither here nor there. The electorate is shifting away from the government, not embracing the opposition. But it is not frightened of having Labor in government, because this Coalition government shows every sign of having run out of ideas, of inspiration or even much more than slogans about what it stands for. And that's Turnbull again, the more pitiably because so many people once invested so much hope in him as someone who had the capacity to cut through the obstacles of recent political history and set the nation a course for the future.

No one any longer talks of Turnbull's potential, or of the hopes raised by his pre-parliamentary past: what you see is what you get, and what you do not see is courage, boldness, abiding (if flexible) principles, and a vision communicated to and shared with other Australians. What you don't get is innovation and agility, or a state of excitement. Nor any sense of being in an intelligent conversation with voters, as promised, compared with the banal slogans of the Abbott years.

This week, the Turnbull government was struggling with whether it should abandon its efforts to extend corporate tax cuts to big as well as small businesses, and with the settling of its national energy guarantee. On the former, a significant number of backbenchers have been spooked by Shorten's success with statements such as that while Turnbull is thinking about tax cuts for banks, he is thinking about the schools or the hospitals that foregone money could spend. An increasing number, moreover, admit what has always been obvious to the general public: that tax cuts to corporations do not automatically lead to a rush of investment, more jobs, higher wages and a stronger economy. The attachment to the policy – almost all of what passes for economic policy – also has the disadvantage of confirming the opposition's innuendo that Turnbull is from the big end of town, governing for the big end of town.

From one point of view, it might be wise to junk the policy ruthlessly and as quickly as possible. John Howard did this in 2001 after a by-election fiasco and a leaked note from the Liberal Party organisation about how the government was seen as mean and tricky. But Turnbull and the government generally have problems about being seen as irresolute and not sticking to things. It might be better if the policy fails again in the Senate, then is dropped, like the zombie tax cuts, as a noble if unattainable goal. It certainly won't be in next year's election manifesto.

The problems with the national energy guarantee are neither good policy nor in the long-term national good. This is the politics of the Coalition, including the malice of Turnbull's enemies. Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg may have tried hard to shape compromises that address, at least in the short term, both the cost of household energy and the government's unambitious climate-change aspirations. Frydenberg needs the support of the states, including Labor states. But he also needs the support of the Coalition caucus, and some within it are determined that he will not get it. Some do not believe even in modest reductions in emissions; some have ideological beliefs about the place of coal, scepticism about dependence on renewable sources of energy, or are climate-change denialists. Or, just as significantly, they have an issue with which to beat Turnbull over the head. All this within a framework in which the policy experts are far from clear, once one canvasses the assumptions, that a NEG will be better than no policy at all.

But that's not the problem. The problem is that the argument, or the discussion, is not taking place with the public. The players are addressing the interests but not the electorate at large. That electorate includes many people who want climate-change action – something Turnbull once believed in, a cause for which he lost his position (to Abbott) as opposition leader. But it also includes householders worried about power bills but, so far, not in on the secret about how, why or even whether the NEG will reduce them.

It's not that the issues are too complex, or that the public cannot make intelligent choices on an issue that does not anyway involve anything fundamental to party philosophy (a fact obvious from the fact that nearly all grandstanders on the subject, especially Abbott, have had every position under the sun over the years). Frydenberg's desire to get a policy approved by the Council of Australian Governments before it goes to the Coalition caucus has the advantage of presenting the caucus with a fait accompli. But that will not disinhibit critics; indeed, it may embolden them in the knowledge that Labor states will walk away if everything is further watered down.

It's all of a one with the coercive meanness of the welfare sector, the flaunting of cruelty to boat people, the blatant use of racism to prepare for a Victorian state election, and the lack of any inspired or intelligent policy, other than doing nothing on events in South-East Asia, the problems of Trumpism and the effects of a trade war. This is not a government thinking its way forward or shining a light on the future. It's edging and groping, facing backwards, in the dark.

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Students of Australian Federal Police forensic triumphs may have heard that a crack team of detectives is near the end of a nine-month investigation into how news of an impending large-scale AFP raid on union offices was leaked to TV journalists so that cameras could be (and were) in position when the wallopers arrived. The AFP is now liaising with the Director of Public Prosecutions about whether charges can, or should, be laid.

One would not know this from any AFP media statement, even if it detected some evidence of off-the-record "guidance" in reports that police would be taking witness statements (14 in number), records of discussions with 34 other people, emails, SMSs and phone records to the DPP in the next few weeks. What we know, formally, emerged at a Federal Court directions hearing at which the Australian Workers Union was trying to have the warrants used by the AFP in the raids thrown out.

If police believed they had evidence of a crime – probably of improper release of information – it was open to them to lay charges of their own initiative; as they did, for example, in the celebrated tax raids, which saw an array of people, including family members of a senior Tax Office official, arrested in charges organised around getting maximum media publicity, particularly before the accused people appeared in court and, according to some reckoning, sub judice rules apply. In that case, senior police bureaucrats gave extensive briefings, including making helpful suggestions to one journalist who already had a whiff of the story (who was allowed by the AFP to get a scoop). Flow charts and close details of what would be alleged were broadcast to all. No one seemed to worry that it might "poison the well" and deny the defendants a fair trial; if that was a matter of public interest, it could hardly compete with the police's interest in getting maximum publicity for themselves.

It's much the same with AFP media conferences when detectives, announcing large drug seizures, announce they have broken a big gang and give themselves great pats on the back. When, the next day, one asks even an innocuous question about another matter, one is told piously that no information can be given out because the matter is sub judice. The discriminating factor is whether disclosure suits the police, or the government's appetite for publicity.

One can be sure that the government wants as little publicity as possible for the DPP's cogitations on the AWU raid. The DPP will at least be well informed, having been less than successful earlier as counsel to the union royal commission, in developing cases for prosecuting unions or their officials. It seems the AFP is likewise reticent, even if it could be part of a strategy to stop its investigation's findings, if any, from coming out. Now that the AFP has sent its findings to the lawyers, the police can piously claim legal professional privilege and resist freedom-of-information production, or legal discovery, even if the DPP lodges no charges, or, if there are charges, after the matter is concluded. In the meantime, the normally busy AFP national media office will play a completely dead bat.

This might suit them personally given the likelihood, whether or not it was actively investigated by a crack team of detectives, that the source of the information leaked was almost certainly, via several channels, the AFP itself. The AFP has a long-established practice of giving its minister and his office a "heads up" about anything it is doing that is likely to have political ramifications. It also does when Labor is in government. The AFP's deep politicisation is not, usually, party partisan so much as an earnest desire to please the government (which is to say, the funding authority) of the day, and in ways that invites questions about its real independence and detachment.

Journalists on the AFP drip are hardly likely to complain about their "inside" information. Indeed, some journalists on the drip were outraged that a journalist dobbed in a ministerial staffer of former workplace relations minister Michaelia Cash as one of the sources of media tip-offs about the raid. This was a breach of media ethics on protecting sources, some suggested. It is through such sources that some journalists have become mere unquestioning megaphones for unaccountable sources inside government.

But perhaps I am wrong. After the big tax raids 15 months ago, I lodged an FOI request on the AFP for details of media arrangements for the affair, including the media strategy document prepared some time before. I was given some dross, but access to the strategy documents is still under appeal, after a host of AFP delays. But last Monday, I was given an AFP document (nine months after the AFP's FOI unit said, wrongly, that it sent it to me) in which a member of the AFP media unit – whose name is, apparently, too sensitive to be released – saying (s)he had "no issues" about my getting the document "because it shows a journo was onto the story well before resolution", hence the deal. "Jack's the only one kicking up a stink and the strategy will debunk everything he is claiming. Plus his readership is only about 10 people.''

(S)he may be right, alas. But the advice about letting the document go was not followed by the AFP branch, which is never able to let go.

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