A pop quiz: Is Scott Morrison the first prime minister to be insulted from within government?

Scott Morrison joins the long line of prime ministers who have faced attacks from within their own government. Picture: Gary Ramage

Oh for Shakespeare’s skill with insults, with their hyphenated adjectives! Dog-hearted, milk-livered, hell-black, shrill-gorged, lust-dieted, all within a few pages of King Lear.

But even before the SMS intruded into our lives, Australian politicians knew how to let loose – and more often than not, at those who were (in theory) their closest colleagues.

So here’s a little quiz, drawn from our great political biographies. Prizes? If you win, we’ll stab you in the back: with a blunt bodkin, bien sur.

1. Who said: “Behind me sit the whole of my opponents”?

(a) Alfred Deakin

(b) John Gorton

(c) Kevin Rudd

Former PM Kevin Rudd. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Former PM Malcolm Turnbull. Picture: NCA NewsWire/POOL/Bianca De Marchi

2. About who was it said that “he could not lead a flock of homing pigeons”?

(a) Robert Menzies

(b) Bill Hayden

(c) Malcolm Turnbull

3. What prime minister was called “rat like”, “duplicitous” and “incessantly dishonest” by members of his cabinet?

(a) George Reid

(b) Billy Hughes

(c) Billy McMahon

Alfred Deakin.

4. Who was notoriously described by one of his close colleagues as unduly “conscious of the fact that he was the beheld of all the beholden”?

(a) Stanley Melbourne Bruce

(b) John Curtin

(c) Gough Whitlam

5. Of what politician was it said that he had “discovered adultery too late” to know how to carry it off competently?

(a) Jim Cairns

(b) Bob Hawke

(c) Barnaby Joyce

Jim Cairns.

Bob Hawke.

6. Who claimed, at 70, that had he ever been involved in politics, there was no way he would have lived as long — one does nothing but make enemies?

(a) Socrates

(b) George Bernard Shaw

(c) Jack Nicholson

For double points:

How many Australian prime ministers have never been viciously insulted by members of their government?

None

[Answers: 1(a); 2(a); 3(b); 4(b); 5(a); 6(a)]