The frog, who has seen scorpions sting and kill its brethren, is cautious and tells the scorpion no, because he is afraid of being stung.

The scorpion reassures the frog by telling it he too would die if he stung the frog while riding it across the river, and the frog sees the truth in this and offers the scorpion his back. As they approach the middle of the river, the frog feels the scorpion’s tail pierce his skin, and the poison immediately begin to flow through and paralyse his body.

“Why?” he gasps as he and the scorpion sink beneath the water.

“I’m sorry,” the scorpion says as the two see the face of death. “It is but my nature.”

The moral of the story, at least as it was relayed to me as a child, is that you cannot expect rationality from those unwilling to fight their worst nature.

This week, watching Tim Wilson and the Liberals attempt to reignite the work-from-home debate, just months after the Coalition was forced to dump its policy to force the public service back into the office mid-election because of how unpopular it was, brought the frog and the scorpion front of mind.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan announced plans last week to enshrine employees’ rights to work from home for at least two days a week in law, setting off the predictable culture war over whether workers deserve any gains.

Allan’s plan makes political sense – Labor saw the polling, internal and external, on the Liberals’ plan to force public servants back to the office, and the reaction from workers, particularly women, worried it would be the start of walking back the agency some have managed to carve out since the pandemic.

But the announcement was like a red flag to business and those with vested commercial interests, especially as it came just as the federal needle turned towards productivity.

Enter the Liberals, specifically Wilson who, fresh from his recent refresh in parliamentary procedure (fans of the genre already know), decided to enter the fray with the zeal of someone who has just discovered franking credits at the end of the rainbow.

Wilson thinks protections for work-from-home employees amount to “professional apartheid and prejudice” and has gleefully thrown himself back into the fray, seemingly happy to remind everyone why the Liberals were so comprehensively destroyed at the last election.

It’s not going to be the last reminder. The Liberals are without direction or relevance, which gives room for rogue agents to let loose their worst political instincts.

With the Nationals continuing to drag their senior partner around the policy space like a beaten-down donkey, the Coalition will continue to operate as an answer without a question. This Coalition couldn’t serve if drafted.

The problem with that is that it is still seen as the opposition, and elevated as the counterbalance, which means the government has no effective foil. There are signs the independents and crossbench are positioning themselves to fill the role of opposition, both through issues they are taking up and questions they are asking of the government.

But for now the Coalition maintains its place as the official opposition, in the parliament, the media’s view of the world, and the government itself. Which doesn’t leave Labor completely unchecked, but it’s like sending in a fly to battle an elephant. All it really can do is annoy it.

But there are big issues the the government needs to be checked on and it’s not support for the work-from-home workforce. The copyright exemptions for artificial intelligence recently floated by the Productivity Commission – with initial welcome from the government – is not just a concerning on the morality, but for future implications for anyone’s intellectual property. There’s no difference between the parties on AUKUS or gas and the Coalition’s ineptitude on climate just makes the least Labor can do look good.

This doesn’t mean there is no difference between the parties, or that Labor is not having some positive impacts on policy spaces – but on the big issues the nation faces, there is no push to do better.

So it doesn’t.

Labor is happy for the Coalition’s rogue scorpions to continue letting their worst instincts run free, because it not only takes the spotlight, it makes Labor look more competent by comparison. But the government should remember that at the end of the fable, the scorpion and the frog went down together.

An earlier Persian version of the tale replaces the frog with a turtle, which survives the scorpion’s sting due to its hard shell and, depending on the version you get, either admonishes itself for believing the scorpion could overcome its nature or drowns the scorpion to prevent it harming others.

There’s a reason the frog and scorpion eclipsed that version – because it’s much more likely both go down. If the Coalition’s ongoing ineptitude allows Labor to keep its vision as narrow as has been presented, they’ll both learn why.