Welcome back to your weekly federal politics update, where Courtney Gould gets you up to speed on the happenings from Parliament House.

Angus Taylor was standing outside an independent supermarket nestled in one of Canberra's wealthiest suburbs when he was asked why he chose there and not somewhere else to make his foreshadowed pivot to the cost of living.

"No one is immune from Labor's cost-of-living," he told reporters in Red Hill, where the median house price is $2.1m. Even people who shop at bougie supermarkets fall on hard times.

The opposition leader had been called out in the newspapers for his lacklustre tactics in the days before. Taylor and his team had spent the first parliamentary days of this new Coalition-era firmly focused on the issue of the return of the so-called ISIS brides.

There was a combative press conference where Taylor branded a group of Australian women, whose mothers travelled to Syria and married Islamic State fighters, terrorist "sympathisers". He then snapped at a reporter who interjected to try and get him to answer the question on who was responsible for these children if not Australia. 

Back in the chamber, question after question was hurled at the government about its response to the women and children. The government meanwhile was talking up its response to the conflict in the Middle East and tackling the cost-of-living. Even Tim Wilson scarified his first question as shadow treasurer to staying on theme. A question on Australia's onshore fuel reserves came from Barnaby Joyce.

The messaging out of the joint party room this week was there was a real "positive vibe" all around. Both the Nationals leader David Littleproud and deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume were energetic as they assured they're pumped to be in this new "Gus" era.

So where will the Gus bus take the Coalition?

Stuck between One Nation and a hard place, the Coalition under Taylor is trying to balance between its two stated priorities: standards of living and Australia's way of life. In the party room, the opposition leader urged his troops to stay focused on them both.

A poll published in the Australian Financial Review this week suggested Taylor hadn't yet shifted the dial in the Coalition's record low standing. It was cost-of-living that took the top spot for voter concern. Immigration was fourth.

Immigration numbers have been rising in the minds of voters. According to the Ipsos Issues Monitor it has jumped to the top six concerns facing voters (at 22 per cent). That's up from 7 per cent when Labor first came to power in 2022. 

It wasn't until Taylor's aforementioned trip to the supermarket for the Coalition to start asking questions about it. But by then economic growth figures had been released and they were better than expected. So the questions, which repeated the same schtick about Anthony Albanese accepting the "buck stopped" with him, fell flat.

But from looking at Taylor's social media, it seems that's the point. It's clipping up the repeated questions and playing them in quick succession and saying to the audience 'see, the PM can't answer the question'. It did so on the so-called ISIS brides, and it did so again on living standards.

As Andrew Hastie told ABC's Radio National Breakfast this week: "Just because commentators … don't like our Question Time strategy, doesn't mean it's wrong."

A curious case of parliamentary decision making was not only contained to QT. The shadow treasurer, who earlier had a botched dig at the government over the fuel excise, broke out into song this week.

As Wilson tapped his hand on the side of the dispatch box and started to sing an adapted version of Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire, one of the Liberal MPs sitting behind him, Zoe McKenzie's eyes bugged.

The whole thing must seen to be believed.

The poor attempt at parliamentary karaoke was not the only source of QT flare this week. Anthony Albanese engaged in his own dramatics as he tabled the leaked review into the Liberal election loss to parliament.

Only weeks earlier had the Liberal federal executive decided to shelve any plans to make it public. So naturally, it was leaked to the media. It was a theatrical stunt that even Hastie conceded in his interview with RN was a "boss move".

All of this of course has been happening in the shadow of the unfolding conflict in the Middle East. Albanese quickly backed the US and Israel's strikes on Iran but, as David Speers wrote, has opted for distance on the question of whether the strikes were legal under international law.

"That's a matter for the United States and Israel," has been the go-to for everyone this week as they try and walk a pretty delicate and difficult diplomatic tightrope. 

Take Canada's prime minister, Mark Carney, who is in Australia for his first official visit this week. He softened his support for the strikes earlier in the week as he conceded they probably breached international law. 

But standing in the prime ministerial courtyard alongside Albanese on Thursday he said while he wanted to see a "broader de-escalation" that couldn't "be achieved unless we're in a position that Iran's ability to acquire a nuclear weapon, develop a nuclear weapon and to export terrorism is ended.

Halted air travel has created a consular crisis as diplomats face the complicated task of how to get Australians out of the region. Foreign Minister Penny Wong has appeared on the morning television and radio shows most mornings in a bid to keep Australians informed.

Some 115,000 Australians are estimated to be in the Middle East region. Around 11,000 travel through the transit hubs (mostly in the United Arab Emirates) each day. While not all of them are trying to get home, it's still a massive number of people to go through.

Six strike teams have been deployed to the region to assist as the government has repeatedly stressed that commercial flights are the best way to get home.

So much about how long this conflict will rage on and its impact on the global economy is unknown. But the government has warned against panic buying petrol and Treasurer Jim Chalmers directed the competition watchdog to monitor fuel prices in a bid to ward off price gouging.

He's also warned that price hikes are a likely outcome of the conflict.

"Unfolding events should not be used as an excuse for retailers to gouge customers or to increase prices opportunistically above and beyond the impacts of events in the Middle East,'' he warned.

Lastly, the date set for the by-election in the New South Wales seat of Farrer following the retirement of Sussan Ley. 

Voters will head to the polls on May 9 in a race that is shaping up to be a four-cornered contest between One Nation, the Nationals, Liberals and a high-profile independent. 

The Coalition has held the seat since its creation in 1949. The by-election will act as the first test on how the Coalition opts to handle its preferences on the how-to-vote cards.