The Canberra Press Gallery – and indeed an entire micro-economy festering on capital hill, sustained by its heinous, perennial revue – has more red meat on its plate than it knows what to do with. We don't intend to expend much time or space repeating what's already been said (though, what's still left on the table surprises us).

Long mocked and caricatured as a figure of Dickensian villainy by the very same cognoscenti that still hadn't accepted John Howard's prime ministership 11 years into its life, Peter Dutton was a great performer for the conservative base and, with Mathias Cormann, the political antenna for Malcolm Turnbull, whose own has its profound limits. Dutton, like Cormann (though the Senate leader's superhuman shepherding of legislation through his chamber sets him apart), commanded moral authority in the party having backed Tony Abbott to the death (and the thanks they got), then served the new leader with undiminished fidelity. As Dutton grew in stature, his detractors were as blinded to his formidability as Howard's were to his.