Perhaps not unsurprisingly, given the Turnbull Transformation, members of the band once known as Team Abbott continued their now month-long pity party.

Former Employment Minister and Senate Leader Eric Abetz whined early in the week to a newspaper that the media just doesn’t respect conservative Christians, complained mid-week about a gay marriage “ambush”, and then capped off the week with an offhand but highly offensive and racial epithet.

The man formerly known as Eleventy gave a warmly-received farewell speech to the parliament, never once admitting the flaws in his approach as Treasurer or the 2014 budget, but still claiming to have made the most significant economic speech in well, forever.

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Mr Hockey’s steadfastly loyal leader (cough, cough), former PM Tony Abbott was nowhere to be seen during the valedictory speech.

He was whinging his way to the UK to give a speech, which no doubt is part of Mr Abbott’s cunning plan to make a Rudd-like return to the prime ministership once voters have become bored with Turnbull 2.0.

Live by the polls, die by the polls

Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s week got off to a splendid start with Monday’s Ipsos opinion poll, which suggested the government had taken a devastating lead over the opposition in the popularity stakes.

The prime minister is riding high in the polls. Photo: Getty

This result was particularly important for Mr Turnbull, given he’d used the Coalition’s poor polling performance as justification for his leadership tilt against former PM Tony Abbott.

Yet until the Ipsos poll results were published, it looked as if the new PM’s stellar personal popularity rating was not translating into a vote boost for the government.

Some political analysts (as well as the Labor Opposition) were dismissive of the Ipsos result, but the Morgan poll that also emerged on Monday had numbers in the same ballpark.

However the Essential poll, which averages out its results over the previous two weeks, was less devastating for Labor.

It would be fair to say that all eyes are on now next week’s Newspoll.

If it continues to record more modest support for the Turnbull government, the Ipsos result will be dismissed as an outrider.

Change the government, change the country

When the previous Newspoll was released two weeks ago, there hadn’t been much evidence to suggest the Turnbull government was particularly different from the Abbott version. Both Labor and Tony Abbott attempted to make mileage on that point.

‘The Fixer’ Christopher Pyne found a new home for money previously earmarked for a research facility run by climate change denier Bjorn Lomborg. Photo: Getty

However that changed this week, with the new PM starting to haul overboard several of the Abbott-era’s policy relics.

Concessions were made to Labor on foreign work permits under the China free trade agreement, and cuts to family payments were softened, while the PM also ruled out any watering down of the Racial Discrimination Act.

Meantime the Industry Minister, Christopher Pyne, suddenly found other uses for the money originally slated for a contentious climate-contrarian’s think tank.

So it appears the Turnbull transformation of the government is well underway.

They saw what you did there Malcolm

That transformation includes changing the dynamics of the plebiscite marriage equality planned for after the federal election.

When the Coalition party room flicked the decision to legalise gay marriage from the parliament to the Australian community, this was meant by the conservatives in the government’s ranks as a tactic to delay if not stop the contentious reform altogether.

Australia will go down a different path to the US, Ireland and New Zealand, which legalised gay marriage judicially, by referendum and through a legislation respectively. Photo: Getty

But it emerged this week, much to the conservatives’ horror, that PM Turnbull plans to channel everyday voters’ support for same sex marriage through the popular vote into a decision that is binding on the parliament.

“Every Australian will get a vote and that vote will be respected,” Mr Turnbull said, ”and if the vote is carried, it will become law.”

Labor who?

The Labor opposition meantime is trying all manner of tactics in the hope of finding something, anything that will stick to the new government’s Teflon-like hide.

Having given up on the millionaire PM’s tax arrangements – for now – Labor focussed on newbie ministers in the hope of tripping them up on the detail.

New Social Services Minister Christian Porter consequently got into a tangle over questions from Labor families spokesperson, Jenny Macklin, about snakes and his “big package” (don’t ask).

Minister Porter struggled with the challenge, and didn’t do himself any favours implying Ms Macklin was a woman of a certain age by saying “The member opposite is from a generation that make assumptions about grandparents and about their capacity to work…”

* Paula Matthewson was media adviser to John Howard in the early 1990s and then worked for almost 25 years in communication, political and industry advocacy roles. She is now a freelance writer and communication strategist. Paula has been tweeting and blogging about politics, the media and social media since 2009 under the pen name @Drag0nista.