While the media’s attention is distracted by Madam Speaker’s and other politician’s curious choices in executive travel, this week is pivotal in the battle of ideas that will decide the next federal election, as David Flint writes in this issue.

Having stopped the boats, banished Julia Gillard’s carbon tax and Kevin Rudd’s mining tax to the dustbin of history, nailed free trade agreements with China, Japan and South Korea (with the Trans-Pacific Partnership in sight), and becoming increasingly confident about its economic direction and reining in debt and deficit inherited from Rudd-Gillard Labor, Tony Abbott’s Coalition finally seems to be going...