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When depression stops you getting out of bed and robs you of motivation, energy, confidence and self-worth, how are you meant to proactively seek support? When anxiety stops you from answering phone calls, speaking to people or even leaving the house, how do you interview service providers? If you can’t advocate for yourself, and you have no one else to advocate for you, then I don’t know how you can possibly access the NDIS.

As one Liberal lamented, no matter what happens, voters won’t have received any tax cuts in their pockets at the time of the next election. But according to the prime minister’s inner sanctum, Labor will do the Liberals a huge favour by promising to raise people’s taxes. It will, but not for the majority of workers – “only millionaires”, who Labor says it can’t afford to help for now, and onto whom it will reapply the deficit reduction levy.

On and on, everyday cruelties abound. Somehow, conservatives get away with running things exactly how they want, while complaining loudly that they’re unable to because of censorship. They are both underdog and victor, gagged yet constantly heard. What, then, is this confected Trumpian backlash really against? Thought? Ironically, this is what free speech warriors are fighting so valiantly against. It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

The giveaway that electioneering is top of mind is the urgency claimed for bills dealing with foreign interference, espionage and sabotage. Absent from the list is the long overdue bill to ban foreign political donations. Labor voluntarily gave up on that cash cow 18 months ago. The Liberals continue to have their hands out to all comers. And that includes Chinese donors – if they are still of a mind to curry favour with the governing party. Why would the Libs want to lose out on this money, estimated to be at least $3 million, when they know they are actively considering a dash to a general election?

Survey the score or more biographies of Murdoch and something becomes perceptible in his core that makes him at some elemental level weirdly like Trump’s psychological twin. This creeping realisation transforms one’s understanding of Murdoch’s Fox News as something more than just the media claque for the lying, cheating United States president that it seems to be. Trump looks more and more like an acute, current flaring of a chronic underlying Murdochism, which began in Australia in the 1950s, spread to Britain in the late 1960s, and continued on to the US in the 1970s, as News Corp bought more and more of the world’s media.

As far as his Nationals colleagues are concerned, last Sunday night’s nationally televised interview was Barnaby Joyce’s political death warrant. Kevin Humphries, whose state seat of Barwon is within the boundaries of Joyce’s federal electorate, told Ten Eyewitness News that ‘for his own sake, Barnaby should move on’. Humphries’ assessment of the damage was chilling for his federal colleagues. He says, ‘People want consistency in decision-making. You need discipline in government and that’s not currently being displayed, so that’s got to change.’

You could forget in the middle of all this low comedy that Cash has pushed the back-and-forth of Australian politics about as far as it can go without becoming something else. There’s the police raid on the Australian Workers’ Union offices, the tip-off to journos from her office, the almost-maybe of what she knew and what she told the Senate, the whiteboard she hid behind. And now the subpoena directing her to front the AWU’s court case challenging the legality of the raid. All of this is such farce that it is easy to miss how serious it is.

The exasperation in the government is palpable. ‘The only thing anyone is talking about this week is the Barnaby Joyce soap opera,’ was the reaction of one fed-up backbencher. But it is not only the distraction that is the issue; it is the spectre of the former deputy prime minister out for payback against his own side of politics.

Simple things, which were completely normal, caused them shock and disturbance. The men had suffered mental torment for so long they imagined they were still on Manus in the detention centre, and so couldn’t put themselves into the real world. They had become institutionalised by the processes that took place in offshore detention. As a consequence, they were constantly concerned there would be no food left, so they all lined up at the same time for their meals. They could not remember simple behavioural practices.

Consistency is not Hanson's strong suit, but on Tuesday she sounded Trumpesque in the way she was contradicting herself. She capped off her Hobart news conference by saying “business needs immediate relief, not seven or eight years down the track”. It seems that, when you are a vehicle for protest, or anger or resentment, you don’t need the credibility of other mere mortals.