Tony Abbott lost the Great Health Debate this week. Going all-out negative against a prime minister that had a plan – maybe not much of a plan, but a plan nevertheless – was the wrong call.

After looking like a strong Opposition Leader and keeping the Government on the hop for months he suddenly looked distinctly “un-prime ministerial” when invited to share the leaders platform alongside Kevin Rudd at the National Press Club this week.

But two days later he’s put that loss of momentum behind him and lost no time in acting decisively to reshuffle his frontbench after the resignation of Nick Minchin.

The decision to move Barnaby Joyce from the finance portfolio was the correct one. He should never have given him the job in the first place and he can’t blame Labor for what he describes as an undeserved attack on the finance shadow.

Senator Joyce brought himself undone all on his own. In trying to pin Labor as the party of debt and deficit he went too far too often, warning that Australia was at risk of defaulting on its debts, and sometimes appearing to move beyond his understanding of the economy and the economic terms within – “gross net debt public and private???”

This made him an easy target, diverted the Opposition from its attacks on the Government on matters like the insulation rollout and along the way it weakened the Opposition’s economic credentials.

So when the chance to reshuffle presented itself today, Tony Abbott took it.

And the Opposition Leader is right – Senator Joyce is a talented politician who will inflict damage on the Labor Government now that he’s free “to get out from behind his desk and travel right around the country spruiking the Labor debt message”. Shadow minister for regional affairs is just the portfolio for doing that, and to start causing trouble for Labor in a swag of regional and rural seats across Queensland and New South Wales in particular.

Barnaby Joyce is strong on politics and weak on policy.

Andrew Robb by contrast is the opposite. He’s not the retail politician that Barnaby Joyce is but he’s a safe pair of hands in the finance portfolio with a strong policy background thanks particularly to his work for the last few months drawing together the Coalition’s policies for the next election.

The perfect background for the pre-budget, pre-election shadow ERC process.

So with the shadow finance ministry sorted that just left one remaining elephant in the room – Malcolm Turnbull.

The former Liberal leader, hurt and hollowed out after being dumped by his party, has spent the past months trying to decide whether to stay in the Parliament and recontest his marginal seat of Wentworth or to move on now that the leadership was out of his grasp.

In recent days he’s signalled he wanted to come in from the cold – back to the frontbench and presumably back after the election.

This was always going to be tricky for Tony Abbott. A big call to offer the man he rolled from the top job a senior economic role on his team but a big call for him not to too.

In the end it seems Tony Abbott has said no to Malcolm Turnbull.

The Opposition Leader said the two men had several discussions, but in the end it was a matter of timing, Tony Abbott deciding it was untenable to have Malcolm Turnbull there as a senior frontbencher when the ETS was brought back into the Senate again in May.

Decoded this suggests that Malcolm Turnbull would not pledge to support shadow cabinet policy to vote against the ETS when the bill came up again.

And how could he give such a promise? He was the man of principle who crossed the floor on this bill last time mounting a devastating attack on his own party’s climate policies along the way. Tony Abbott couldn’t risk a repeat performance – this time from a senior position on the frontbench – in May, just a few months out from an election.

Earlier in the day, New South Wales Liberal leader Barry O’Farrell made a pitch for Malcolm Turnbull to be resurrected to the shadow ministry arguing on Radio National Breakfast that “Turnbull would give grunt and heft to the parliamentary team”.

He would, it’s’ true, and it does seem as though that’s what he now wants to do. It also looks like his leader, the man who took his job by just one vote, has promised Malcolm Turnbull a senior job on the frontbench – after the election.

Of course if Kevin Rudd calls a double dissolution election and wins he’ll presumably bring the Emissions Trading Scheme back yet again to be passed by a joint sitting of Parliament.

That means Malcolm Turnbull will have to vote, yet again, with his conscience and against his party. Delaying, yet again, his return to the frontbench.

Fran Kelly is a presenter on the ABC’s Radio National Breakfast program.