Having dumped the NEG, which had received considerable community and industry support, as part of the fall out from the hatchet job on Malcolm Turnbull, the Coalition has left itself nowhere to go.

All of those months of negotiations, and all of the goodwill, and even tentative bipartisan support, that was generated, have been wasted. There is no time to start the process over.

This week's re-announcement by Scott Morrison and Angus Taylor of their intention to crack down on the big energy companies in order to force them to lower costs to consumers was a classic case of "deja vu all over again". It's a song they have sung at least once or twice before.

Morrison and Taylor appear to believe talking about banging heads together constitutes a meaningful pathway towards lower power bills and improved energy security. They must be the only people in the country who would swallow that.

While the electricity companies have been far from innocent bystanders when it comes to the power bill sticker shock that has had a dramatic impact on the living standards of many Australians in recent years, they are not the actual authors of our misfortunes.

That dubious distinction belongs to a succession of Coalition Oppositions and Governments that have used energy and climate change as political footballs. The ALP, the Greens and the cross-bench have all done their part as well.

Big energy has had to muddle through as best it could during a decade in which renewables were good and coal was bad one day and the reverse was the case the next.

This week's recycled initiatives, including price safety nets, a war on price gouging and increased fines and penalties, are not solutions in and of themselves. They could actually be viewed as a cynical ploy to further demonise the power generators and distributors while diverting attention away from the Government's role in creating this mess.

The commitment to investing in new generation energy that was trotted out on Tuesday is almost comic.

Submissions on how this pie in the sky program should even be structured don't open until November 9. Given Canberra effectively shuts down for six weeks over Christmas and well into the New Year less than a month after that, and with a half Senate election due before the end of May, 2019, what are the odds a Morrison Government will be implementing this?

The same criticisms apply to the proposed "reliable power guarantee contracts" mooted by Morrison on Tuesday. It seems there is Buckley's chance and none a single one of these will be signature ready before the writs are issued for the poll.

These weaknesses, shortcomings and policy failures have left Morrison and Taylor no alternative but to keep on bringing out the big stick.

The best they can hope for before Australia votes is to persuade the electorate they are at least on top of the brief.

If past history is any indication of future performance then we don't like their chances.