Still it is worth remembering that the government has a majority of only one. Bill Shorten is tantalising Turnbull with the possibility that Labor might not support the NEG, probably because it is (he will say) too weak and too compromised by concessions to the coal lobby. But Labor has a memory that it said back climate change reform a decade ago when it took Turnbull to the wire in late 2009 – and caused his demise. The pig in the minefield then was Kevin Andrews, still a close Abbott ally with no love for what Turnbull represents. Abbott, it might be recalled, won against the odds because he divided his enemies, sailing in on the preferences of Joe Hockey, who had expected to win but came in number three.

Labor states are demanding more concessions to strengthen the NEG and to make it easier to amend if and when it takes power. Mutinous government backbenchers, including some who supported Turnbull in the party room are demanding more concessions to weaken it. Shorten will flirt with both, but almost certainly sign up rather than see the Turnbull government fall on the issue. Unless, of course, he actually wants an election soon, fearing that the future will not suit him, and that he could do even better facing a new prime minister, such as Scott Morrison or Peter Dutton, in an election.

With or without Labor support in parliament, however, Turnbull may well find himself weakened rather than strengthened by events of the week. The obvious disunity and the open sniping by Abbott and a few others does not help. But threats to take matters to an election ignore the fact that members of the public (and even many normally well-informed commentators) appear to have little idea of what the NEG does.

And if experience is any guide, they will not assume, as the government invites them to do, that the NEG will significantly cut power bills and guarantee power supplies as well as Paris Accord results. The maths, the working assumptions and the vulnerability of the electricity market to external events are simply too hairy to be sure of outcomes, even if the public had a great deal of trust in the assertions of Turnbull, his ministers, or his Treasury officials. Even seasoned Abbott-haters might agree that the argument is “merchant banker gobbledegook.” A bit like the insistence that big tax cuts for the big end of town will open the floodgates on business investment, new jobs and higher wages.

There’s a very big selling job – and to the interests behind some of the political players on both sides of the equation – and then a big selling job to the public. It hasn’t started yet. Has Turnbull the ticker to take it through?

I’m pretty sure that all the views expressed during the senate euthanasia debate were sincerely held, and, despite my own opinions on the subject, I have no problem with politicians voting in line with their convictions, whether I agree with them or not. Perhaps, though there is no logic to this, especially when the debate has been generally agreed to be a free vote, without parties seeking to bind the consciences of their members to the view of the majority in their caucuses.

But there were arguments raised during the debate which deserve some close consideration. First, Zed Seselja, a senator for the ACT, was thought to have been some sort of rat in voting against the right of the ACT legislature to regulate the local law on the subject. It’s taken as read that most Canberrans support the idea of euthanasia. Seselja is a Catholic, and his church (and, presumably his conscience) is deeply opposed to any form of assisted suicide, so called.

Seselja could, however, have voted for the measure without violating his conscience. He could have made a somewhat artificial distinction, by saying that he was not voting for euthanasia in the ACT (because that was not the motion) but to allow the citizens of the ACT, and the Northern Territory, to make up their own minds on the matter, through their territorial representatives. That was something he could think – given that citizens of the states have such a power – even were he to be strongly opposed to the ACT Legislative assembly using that power to pass a euthanasia law.

The argument about empowering, rather than approving, euthanasia was rejected by the (majority) naysayers, who could see more deeply into a brick wall than the aye-sayers. It was obvious that the repeal of the Andrews legislation would swiftly lead to legislation in place in Canberra and Darwin. I reckon I could frame a similar issue for federal parliament over which those arguing the importance of the distinction on euthanasia would be denying it on the other because of the virtual certainty of the consequences. These are arguments of convenience, not principle.

The second involved a proposition that there was some inherent right for territory citizens, rather than federal ones with wider jurisdictions, to have a vote on the subject. By corollary, there was something inherently offensive about the Commonwealth’s imposing its view of the right thing to do on the territories, because euthanasia, or abortion, or some other hot-button issues, are said to belong naturally to state-type, rather than federal type jurisdictions.

I have known ACT and NT politicians, on both sides of the political fence, to wax hot over three decades on the right of citizens of a state or territory to make a mistake and go their own way if they want to. But I sometimes wonder if those who hold this view, very sincerely I am sure, have thought it right through. Experience would in fact suggest that the proposition is regarded as valid in the typical politician’s mind only if he, or she, agrees with the action the legislature is proposing to make. If not, any number of pseudo-distinctions will be made pretending that the offending proposal is an exception to the rule.

I cannot, for example, remember that Andrew Barr rent his garments in shock and outrage at the violation of the state (or territory) sovereignty principle when the Keating government decided to override legislation in Tasmania that criminalised and persecuted homosexuality. I agree with what Keating did. About a decade earlier, I also agreed when Bob Hawke decided to override the no-doubt honestly held view of a majority of Tasmanians, including a majority of its politicians, that Tasmania should build the Gordon below Franklin dam. Andrew Barr was then very young, but I doubt that even then (or now) he deplored the breach of the principle.

As it turned out, a clear majority of the High Court upheld the Commonwealth’s power to do so, but it must be said that the use of such powers to override state wishes was novel. By contrast, ACT (or Tasmania folk) are allowed to have views about what should happen with the Adani coal project in northern Queensland, because a go-ahead for the project requires both Commonwealth and state permission. Likewise, for good or ill, the Commonwealth has now pretty much crowded the states (and territories) out of any idea that there is much height, breadth or depth to subsidiarity principle about the provision of education or health care. With or without a federal system, and despite mutterings about states’ rights, Australia is becoming more and more of a single nation, a single economy, and a society without very pronounced regional characteristics. Down the line that suggests that the big “moral,” “human rights” and “human dignity” questions will be resolved in national, not local forums. Those who support such rights will probably not worry much about which jurisdiction they come from.

Can, or should, one make distinctions between matters of fundamental human rights, such as about the expression of one’s sexuality and strong beliefs and feelings (say about the sacredness of some part of the environment) against more economic or mundane matters, when the principle of state or territorial sovereignty could be said to be more important? I doubt it, if only because premiers and chief ministers are used to horse-trading with these rights during Council of Australian Government meetings, because one woman’s routine item of business is another’s vital moral issue, and because different treatment of similar situations in different states or territories invariably leads to questions of discrimination.

If we are to accord Seselja, or others in his position, a right to vote in accordance with his conscience, rather than his judgment of what his constituents want, it becomes reasonable for his friends and his enemies to argue the existence of his convictions as a reason for voting for him, or against him, or even for not preselecting him. Many people will never care much about where he stands on balanced budgets, of trade union rights (expecting him to be much the same as others in his party, whatever it is). But his vote on conscience issues, such as about the availability of abortion, or the rights or refugees, or the explosion of racist sentiments in the community, may well matter, because he might make a difference, one way or another by taking a stand on it.

There have been recent occasions, in national politics, when the efforts of, say, Bill Shorten to impose a candidate from his faction on a particular electorate in a by-election has been resisted by party members on the basis of the (would-be) candidate’s conservative views on abortion or euthanasia. In my childhood, Australia was a much more sectarian society, and there were always those who argued that people of one religion or another could not represent the whole community. By 1970, there had not been a Catholic Country Party representative in parliament. Catholics were very rare in the Liberal Party. Even the ALP was sharply divided by religion, especially after many Victorian, Tasmanian and South Australian Catholics had left the party and supported the Democratic Labour Party. In 1960, it was being argued in the United States that John Kennedy was unable to become president because, as a Catholic, he owed his first loyalty to the Pope in Rome and would be bound to follow his instructions.

No one, except perhaps Fraser Anning, misses those days. But while politicians insist on the primacy of their conscience, voters have a legitimate curiosity in what their views are on “moral” issues. And they have a right to reject a candidate with whose views they disagree, or to lobby against a preselection for the same reason. Of course some voters will admire a politician who follows his conscience rather than does the popular thing. But others will deeply resent it, at least if they disagree with the views in question.

I have argued in these columns that the caucus-principle, by which generally MPs vote according to the majority view of their colleagues, should be loosened in the modern world. A party should have agreed core principles, and bind its members to them. But many modern policy questions no longer conform to old left and right, or ideological chasms. The Left-Right divide, for example, is incapable of accounting for different attitudes to coercion and libertarianism. Right now, backbenchers vote like sheep over matters such as the creation of the surveillance state, a policy of bastardry to boat people, and on paranoia about secure borders. If MPs voted as they actually thought on such issues, there would be a majority middle ground that did not embrace Bill Shorten, Peter Dutton, or, probably (assuming that his modern personality is his true one), Malcolm Turnbull. We are worse, not better off, as a result.

Jack Waterford is a former editor of The Canberra Times