In a dramatic attempt to reassert control of his government and the political agenda, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has brought the budget forward and laid the groundwork for a double dissolution election based on the Australian Building and Construction Commission bill. Turnbull announced this morning he would recall Parliament for April 18 and said if it failed to pass the ABCC bill (re-establishing the draconian building industry watchdog) and the registered organisations bill (to impose additional regulatory requirements on union officials), a double dissolution election would be held on July 2.

Turnbull’s tactic will likely result in a mammoth 10-week-plus election campaign given what appears at the moment to be the unlikelihood of the Senate passing both bills. The only chance that the bills would pass would be if there were a crossbench cave-in by independent senators anxious to protect themselves from a double dissolution — a not implausible outcome that would be a major victory for Turnbull, but independent senators have repeatedly indicated they won’t back the bill. If it eventuates, the double dissolution election campaign will include the budget, now to be held on May 3, and the passage of the budget bills. While there has been extensive speculation about moving the budget forward, as late as this morning Treasurer Scott Morrison was insisting the budget would be held as scheduled on May 10.

Two aspects of Turnbull’s double dissolution ploy are worth noting. First, the ABCC bill, which Turnbull labelled “a critical economic reform”, is likely only to lead to higher levels of workplace injuries and fatalities in the construction industry, as happened under the ABCC in the Howard years. Moreover, construction sector productivity surged after the gutting of the ABCC by Labor, and construction industry wages growth trails other sectors of the economy. The ABCC also has extraordinary, security agency-level powers to target anyone in the community.

Moreover, the ABCC issue is unlikely to resonate with voters — polling consistently shows that trade unions are barely on voters’ radar in terms of issues that affect how they will vote, and they tend to see trade unions and business as about as corrupt as each other.

The pointlessness of the ABCC bill as either a policy tool or a political issue illustrates that Turnbull’s tactic is as much — and perhaps more — aimed at his own backbench as it is at the Senate. Turnbull has been dogged by self-inflicted damage and destabilisation for several weeks: last week he was forced to cave in to far-right backbenchers who launched a homophobic assault on the Safe Schools campaign, backed by former prime minister Tony Abbott — who actually launched the campaign when in office. The government’s “tax reform debate” has been a litany of errors, stumbles and backflips that has left the policy space vacant for Labor to fill both through a GST scare campaign and then through its own policies. There’s been a growing chorus even from the Coalition’s media supporters that the cut-through and effective governance expected of Turnbull has failed to appear, leaving a sense of disappointment and indecision.

Turnbull will be hoping both that the looming election date will instil more discipline in his backbench and cow Tony Abbott and his coterie from their campaign of destabilisation. Julia Gillard was famously nearly destroyed in 2010 when Kevin Rudd leaked against her during that election campaign, so the question will now be whether Abbott decides to go the full Rudd or decides his party is more important than revenge. And he’ll be hoping that voters will see in his double dissolution strategy the decisiveness and boldness they expected from the Prime Minister — which has been so sorely lacking so far.

The risk, however, is that, the momentum achieved by the announcement proves only temporary, that voters become rapidly tired of the de facto election campaign that is underway from now, and that will certainly commence in earnest on April 18 if the Senate rejects the bills, regardless of Parliament continuing to sit. In substituting electioneering for governing, Turnbull might be able to convince voters he’s the real thing — or convince them that their hopes for real change in politics have been dashed. And given the cost of recalling Parliament early, rushing the budget forward by a week and conducting a double dissolution election, it’s an extraordinarily expensive gamble to regain control of political opportunities so badly squandered since September.