Albanese tees off but his zinger bogey is par for the course

Anthony Albanese enjoys his punchline during question time at Parliament House in Canberra on Monday. Picture: AAP

Labor leader Anthony Albanese came out swinging, not with big-stick energy but with a golf club.

“I refer to (Scott Morrison’s) weekend boasts that he was wedging Labor in the sitting period,” ­Albanese kicked off question time.

He paused before delivering a punchline workshopped breathlessly by his team, knowing full well Labor had a hit-and-miss rec­ord with zingers under former leader Bill Shorten (with more landing in the bunker than on the green).

“As any golfer knows, while wedges are handy — drivers are what you need to get going,” Albanese exclaimed.

It earned him more than a golf clap from the chamber, with one Liberal backbencher commenting: “I give it a nine for effort and 6.5 for execution. But credit for effort.”

As the Prime Minister replied that he could understand why Albanese was “so focused on his own woes”, Liberal MP for Reid Fiona Martin followed him down the fairway.

Seated in the TV splashback zone, she nodded so ­methodically and without hesitation for more than a minute that she began to resemble a dashboard bobblehead.

On par with the good old ­Abbott days of Team Australia, Morrison had donned a green-and-gold striped tie with bonus Australian flag lapel pin for the occasion, in honour of the boys bringing home the Ashes.

Specifically Steve Smith. Who, the Prime Minister noted to groans from his own frontbench, was a “proud son of the Sutherland District Cricket Club”.

“He has answered his critics in the best way that you can in sport — with bat and ball in hand,” Mr Morrison said.

Scott Morrison and Energy Minister Angus Taylor leave the chamber laughing. Picture: Gary Ramage

Despite taking a much publicised day trip for a meat pie and press conference in Biloela last week, there was no mention by ­Albanese of the Sri Lankan Tamil family facing deportation.

Not even the obvious hole-in-one of Morrison’s own backbenchers calling for them to stay.

Gone is the reactionary, quick-on-their-feet Labor questions in response to outrageous bogeys such as this from Josh Frydenberg: “The gender pay gap has closed.”

Instead we suffered (but not in silence) through Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack marvelling at the “eighth wonder of the world” and “masterpiece of architecture” that is the Toowoomba bypass.

Labor’s Graham Perrett thought MicMac performed like a “bad actor in a slow-motion Demtel ad”.

We guessed an audition reel for the opening credits of ABC’s rail-and-road comedy Utopia, which features a montage of politicians talking about nation-building.

Warringah’s independent-for-now Zali Steggall, who earlier on Monday welcomed former ABC and Fairfax journalist Sarah Whyte as the new spinner in her Manly team, skipped sport for a climate question.

She was quickly told to pause by Speaker Tony Smith as her microphone wasn’t turned on.

She hit it twice — thud, thud — and that seemed to do the trick.

“Peak medical bodies last week declared a health climate emergency … Today emergency ser­vices are saying the fires in NSW and Queensland are unprecedented this early in spring … Does the Prime Minister agree Australia needs a real plan to decarbonise every polluting sector by 2020?”

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton heckled “written by GetUp” as Steggall sat down.

But the Prime Minister waited until the back nine to tee up his winning shot.

“It’s chaos and uncertainty and in NSW, there is the big stench of corruption … in NSW — the Leader of the Opposition’s home division.”

Recycling a joke from his weekend appearance at the NSW Liberal state council, he continued: “When I said we had to recycle plastics, Mr Speaker, I didn't mean Aldi plastic bags stuffed full of cash. That was not my plan, Mr Speaker! But it is certainly the plan of the NSW Labor Party.”

Fellow nodder Steve Irons, Liberal member for Swan, banged his desk so loudly that perpetually anxious Energy Minister Angus Taylor — who spent the hour sitting on his hands waiting for the next Labor attack — jumped.