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

Anthony Albanese and Angus Taylor are both leaders under pressure trying to control the narrative in different ways.

While the prime minister was cutting off a press conference to avoid answering questions over what's become a melee over melons, back in Canberra the opposition leader's staffer was caught on camera letting loose at a journalist.

Channel 10 journalist Ashleigh Raper was grilling Taylor about his links to Dallas McInerney, who has been named in the NSW ICAC inquiry into illegal donations to the NSW Liberals.

The opposition leader has previously denied he gave money to the Liberal faction at the centre of the corruption probe into branch stacking. He repeated on Thursday that no payment had been made, while avoiding questions about discussions (after allegations surfaced in the inquiry members of the group had asked him for money).

After Taylor walked away, his senior adviser Kane Silom took aim at the Channel 10 reporter. "Are your ratings that bad? Seriously, that's a fricken disgrace," he said. "No wonder 10+ got cut," he said, referring to the current affairs program that was recently wound back.

Albanese prefers to avoid the question all together. Like Taylor, he also made himself available to the media. The press conference in Newcastle, to mark a deal to keep the Tomago smelter running, was only the fourth in the past month. None of the press conferences were held in Canberra where he faced questions from political reporters.

The government had been running the line that the prime minister's gesturing in front of his chest, while he discussed the two melons gifted to him by his Japanese counterpart, had been misinterpreted.

So, the press conference was the first chance to ask the prime minister: so what DID you mean?

Albanese began answering the question (he uses his hands all the time and the relationship with Japan is great), before NSW Premier Chris Minns intervened to demand the topic return to the smelter.

A carefully timed cut off by a staffer ensured journalists not from the local area had no further opportunity.

The prime minister's decision to appear on the Bush Deep podcast last month has become a game of whack-a-mole for the government. When it was originally published, Albanese copped it for remarks he made about Kylie Minogue. He swiftly apologised for that.

But after a former Japanese ambassador, Shingo Yamagami (who is no fan of the Labor government as my colleague Stephen Dziedzic reported), claimed the joke was disrespectful, the podcast returned to the headlines. 

Albanese could have done the same thing he did last time, swiftly conceding his mistake before moving on but he didn't. 

Instead, a diplomatic note in which Japan said it saw no ill-intent in the remarks found its way into the media. The Coalition referred the apparent leak to the federal police as it took up the issue in parliament.

As David Speers wrote, the full-throated pursuit of the saga by the Coalition might, in time, prove to be the right choice. Slowly chipping away at the paint of Albanese's character, much like Labor did to Scott Morrison.

Albanese is fortunate that none of the women involved, Sanae Takaichi, Kylie Minogue, nor his wife Jodie, have publicly commented on the jokes he made about them.

Getting grilled at press conferences isn't the only common ground Albanese and Taylor have shared this week. The pair met several times behind the scenes in a bid to hash out deals on gambling advertising, the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the news media bargaining incentive.

The government wants all three bills ticked off before parliament rises next week. Albanese told the caucus he expected the NDIS overhaul to pass with the Coalition's support.

He was also projecting confidence that the government's planned changes to gambling advertising would pass once an agreement was reached on winding back inducements to entice people to punt.

A targeted crackdown on inducements offered to high rollers and a simplified option to curb ads on streaming services may be where this lands, as Clare Armstrong reported this week.

Crossbench MPs conceded they had "lost the battle" on tougher gambling advertising restrictions, as some within the Coalition began calling for an automatic review to be baked into the legislation.

Meanwhile, a curious appearance at the National Press Club by Liberal moderate Andrew Bragg also ruffled some feathers within the opposition.

The NSW frontbencher was there to outline the plan to slash the National Construction Code to just 80 pages. Gone would be things like energy efficiency standards in favour of a "simple" house with "basic" amenities to get more people into more dwellings.

But the speech took a turn before he even got to that point. Bragg's wide-ranging address freelanced well beyond his housing portfolio, taking aim at "indolent" leaders over the past 20 years, apologising for failing to "do more to stop the madness" during the Morrison-era.

The tax scales should be rebalanced, he argued, while also wading into the GST, fiscal management, energy and superannuation. He was later counselled by the opposition leader and urged to stick to sharing opposition policy rather than his personal opinions.

"Andrew expressed some of his personal views yesterday. I've made clear to him that his job is to express … the views of the Coalition and the senior team of which he is a member when it comes to immigration policy," Taylor said.

Nationals leader Matt Canavan also took issue with Bragg's assessment that backpacker visas could be on the list to be wound back under a Coalition crackdown on migration.

One of his colleagues would later describe the speech to Tom Crowley as "for Bragg by Bragg".

"Well, who said that?" he asked ABC's Radio National Breakfast host Sally Sara, who declined to tell him.