The Battleship Albanese is a paragon of calm but in the water lurks Dutton, looking for cracks in the armour

At the start of every new government, prime ministers imagine themselves the tamers of chaos. They attempt to reset the operational tempo of politics. This process is invariably interesting because everybody has their own objectives and methodology.

The point of this recap is to explain why new prime ministers crave the reset; why they engage in the chaos taming. Governing has been borderline unmanageable in liberal democracies since digital technology upended the orderly habits of the analogue age. All prime ministers since Kevin Rudd have grappled with this phenomenon.

Given the Liberals have lost the electorates of Warringah, Mackellar, North Sydney, Wentworth, Goldstein, Kooyong, Curtin, Bennelong, Higgins and possibly Reid at least in part because of this kind of weaponised lying about climate action, it seemed counterproductive to unleash another instalment while poor old Ley was attempting a necessary gesture of inclusivity to the alienated heartland. But wiser heads than mine determine these forays, obviously.

Dutton appears determined to wrest climate action out of the inevitability column and drag it back to where the Coalition has imprisoned this issue for a decade. Climate action is a threat. Labor will cock up the transition because Labor is incompetent.

Dutton would be well placed to remember, though, that when it comes to underwater surveillance, there are two possible end points. Your torpedo splits the hull. Or, to borrow from TS Eliot, human voices wake you and you drown.