At six minutes past eight on the evening of Monday 3 March, the camera panned unexpectedly off the face of a fiery, defiant Prime Minister and across to his grim-looking Treasurer. It was a fleeting instant that revealed the extraordinary transformation that has occurred between the two over the last few months.

The fascinating aspect of the entire Qantas debacle, and of the rapid sequence of events of the last few weeks where one industry after another has come cap in hand to the government only to be sent away empty-handed, has been the abrupt role reversals of Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey.

Of course, there is often tension between treasurers and prime ministers: think Gorton/McMahon, Whitlam/Cairns, Howard/Fraser, Keating/Hawke, Costello/Howard. Political tension all too often is exacerbated by the natural fiscal prudence of the holder of the purse strings being at odds with the ever-eager-to-please inclinations of the leader. (Mr Swan, by virtue of his own profligacy and wastefulness, edits himself out of this particular narrative).

Prior to the 2013 election, some conservatives had prepared themselves for a rerun of the paternalist and reform-averse governments of the Fraser era. Tony Abbott, thanks to his overly generous paid parental leave scheme and his election-eve $16 million gift to a chocolate factory — not to mention his friendship with DLP founder Bob Santamaria — was morphing into the ‘wet’ Liberal straight out of Central Casting: he talked tough, but splashed the cash around wherever it was needed. Joe Hockey, meanwhile, having called for the end of entitlements in his London speech of 2012, was clearly the ‘dry’ of the two. One Fairfax journalist even called him a Thatcherite. Free-marketeers, remembering Mr Hockey’s moist positions in opposition on climate change, took a deep breath and crossed their fingers behind their backs.

Yet as Qantas begged and pleaded for some form of taxpayer assistance to help them out of their largely self-inflicted crisis, it was Mr Hockey who appeared to be preparing the groundwork for a debt guarantee. Studiously, he laid out four boxes that Qantas had to tick, sharpened his pencil and publicly started ticking them off. Much to the annoyance of conservatives, the consternation of Virgin boss John Borghetti and the delight of Alan Joyce, the debt guarantee looked like it was in the flight bag. And yet at the last moment, Mr Abbott stepped up to the despatch box and announced, ‘if we have to give it to one, we have to give it to all.’

On 3 March, the debt guarantee was jettisoned like excess baggage. ‘We do not believe in government by chequebook and we certainly don’t believe in any normal circumstances that government should be playing favourites between competing private businesses,’ Mr Abbott announced, before adding: ‘I want to thank all of my colleagues for the strong and spirited discussion that we had.’

The question, as we approach the budget, is whether the drying out of Mr Abbott will continue. Let’s hope so. It is long overdue.

Malcolm in a muddle (again)

It would appear that whenever he attends a convivial event promoted or widely attended by the chardonnay set, the member for Australia’s most progressive electorate can’t help himself. Last year, at the Press Freedom dinner, after delivering a long and rambling speech Mr Turnbull made a beeline for the warm embrace of (of all people) his pals at the Guardian Australia table. Last week, it was at the launch of the dreary and predictably left-wing Saturday Paper that Malcolm felt the urge to throw a few bones to the crowd.

Mocking the Australian for its recent attack on Australian Financial Review editor Michael Stutchbury, Mr Turnbull sarcastically praised the Oz’s attention to detail. ‘Nothing is too small in terms of the deficiencies of the nation,’ he declared to laughter from the crowd. But it was his praise for publisher Morry Schwartz, whom he eulogised for not being ‘some demented plutocrat pouring more and more money into a loss-making venture that’s just going to peddle your opinions’, that brought the house down. The following morning came Mr Turnbull’s sober denials that the target of his witty diatribe was Rupert Murdoch (even though the crowd assumed it was) and much fun was had on Twitter at his insistence that he’d been referring to, er, William Randolph Hearst.

As with his predictable appearances on Q&A, Mr Turnbull knows how to butter up his audience. Alas, it always seems to be the Left that laughs the loudest.