The zeitgeist is, as Bill Clinton once put it, "the economy, stupid". The Prime Minister's innovation statement on Monday, improved jobs figures on Thursday and a Council of Australian Governments meeting focused on tax on Friday showed how central the economy is.
But is it? If the innovation statement is about securing Australia's long-term future, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull should reach back three-quarters of a century to lock in that result. This was 1940, or one year into World War II. United Australia Party leader Robert Menzies had just won a tight election, hanging on to power with the support of two independent country MPs. 
Labor leader John Curtin refused Menzies' offer to join a national government, rather like the one led by Winston Churchill in Britain. So instead Menzies formed the Advisory War Council. It comprised four cabinet ministers, three members of the opposition and Frederick Shedden, Secretary of the War Cabinet.
Established to provide bipartisan advice on Australia's prosecution of the war, it morphed under the subsequent Curtin Labor government into the supreme war-time decision maker. The Advisory War Council in many respects replaced the war cabinet, giving it enormous sway over Australia's handling of the military situation.
Australia requires a similar approach to deal with terrorism - on Thursday a 15-year-old boy was charged over a plan to attack a federal building.
The practice of Islamic State, or Daesh, of recruiting murderous, fanatical supporters from within Muslim communities in other countries, including Australia, has become - and don't make any mistake about this - an existential crisis for Western civilisation.
This is not just because of the horrific murders fanatical Daesh cadres commit in foreign countries. It's because Daesh is inviting a violent reaction among those same Western countries. Its propaganda is rife with prophecies about the last great battle and it attracts young fighters on the promise that joining the group will give them the most direct chance to bring these prophecies to fruition.
Cracking down hard on Muslim communities to combat domestic terrorism by some extremists triggers resentment, a stream of Daesh hate propaganda, and outrage from other Islamist groups - some because of genuine community concern and others that defend Islamist terrorism without explicitly advocating it.
Critics such as former prime minister Tony Abbott say adopting a more measured approach, like eschewing a ground force commitment to crush Daesh in its terrorist bases in Syria and Iraq, will not solve the crisis.
And jihadism is growing. The New York-based intelligence consultancy the Soufan Group says the number of foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria attracted to terrorist groups such as Daesh has more than doubled since 2014 to at least 27,000.
Some return to their country of origin to practise their murderous mayhem. Through killing innocent people, Daesh seeks to destroy pluralist societies like France, Britain, the US, Canada and Australia.
For Canada and Australia, which are explicitly wedded to creating multicultural states, the terrorist challenge, which largely emanates from parts of a single community, takes on a particular edge.
It's sobering to reflect on the view of British historian Arnold Toynbee that whether or not civilisations survive is dependent on how they respond to particular challenges that are thrown up to them. Young Daesh supporters around the world, including in Australia, are animated by an apocalyptic Islamist vision where, in the name of Allah, it is right to murder "infidels" en masse to establish a global caliphate.
This scenario seemed grotesquely preposterous just two years ago, but now confronts us.
A national terrorism advisory council won't solve these problems, but it will present a truly national approach - at least among leading echelons of both main political parties.
This council could include Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, Defence Minister Marise Payne, and Attorney-General George Brandis. On the Labor side there could be Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, ALP deputy leader and foreign affairs spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek, and shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus. The secretary could be the director-general of the Office of National Assessments, Richard Maude.
ONA is the nation's peak foreign intelligence agency. It reports directly to the Prime Minister, providing expert assessments and analysis of international political, strategic and economic events and what they mean for Australia. It also co-ordinates the nation's foreign intelligence efforts.
If the terrorism advisory council were in existence now, it would book-end the end of the week by endorsing federal-state plans to place people convicted of terrorist-related offences in indefinite detention, if they do not show any intention of reforming. It would also receive a report on the arrests of five young people on terrorist-related charges in Sydney, which included the 15-year-old who had been under police surveillance for a year.
As Bill Clinton has not said: "No, it's not just the economy, stupid."