Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has blundered today by referring his embattled Health Minister Sussan Ley’s travel claims off to the secretary of his department.

Instead of cauterising a political wound — bleeding even more freely in the middle of the silly season — he is letting it sap his already weakened government.

Even more astoundingly, he has reminded everyone of allegations of improprieties past by putting Arthur Sinodinos into Health while Ley is investigated, compounding the pain of the issue at stake here — the separate set of rules our politicians appear to abide by and the expectations placed on the public.

But much of this scandal may be the result of another blunder.

Medicare was a major issue at the last election; one that Ley proved to be singularly inadequate in dealing with, even though Blind Freddie should have anticipated Labor’s attack on what has been a perpetual Coalition weak point.

Yet she was kept in her post. Her office was made the scapegoats and her staff subjected to a purge.

Could that and all the diary detail and travel logs appearing in the media be at all related?