The Sketch: This stormy teacup has a big crack in it

While running through the ­Coalition’s list of achievements in Tuesday’s joint partyroom, Josh Frydenberg noted that the wholesale price of electricity had ­decreased now the government ­finally had a decent Energy Minister in Angus Taylor.

The room erupted with laughter. Frydenberg, of course, was the previous energy minister.

But the Treasurer’s jokes didn’t appease the angry inner-city moderates. They were told to shut up to avoid a barny (or should that be a Barn-ab-y) with their coal-loving conservative colleagues.

“We need to put the internal ­issues behind us,” Frydenberg pleaded to deaf ears.

“It is like appeasing a child who has a tantrum,” a Liberal MP complained to The Australian’s Greg Brown. “This is what we have been doing for four years. The more they don’t get their way, the bigger the tantrum is.”

Kevin Andrews decided to take his medicine from a Labor hero. “As Bob Hawke once said: ‘If you can’t govern yourselves, you can’t govern the country’,” the member for Menzies said while walking into the building. “My message to all of my coalition ­colleagues is unity, unity, unity!”

Strange! That’s nearly identical to what Anthony Albanese told RN Breakfast mere minutes earlier, when asked whether Labor was just mischief-making by installing former-Nat-but-still-LNP MP Llew O’Brien as Deputy Speaker.

Quoth Albo: “Well the fact is that this is an absolute wreck of a government. It is chaos from their side. They don’t have a plan for anything. Just a plan (for) marketing and spin. Clearly, if you can’t govern yourself, you can’t govern the country.”

Government whip Rowan Ramsey had an old school idea: “I say to people, when you think it’s a bit disruptive in Canberra, I say to them, ‘Pick out a country where you think they’re doing it better and I’ll see if I can pull any strings and get you a visa so you can go and live there’.”

Go back to where you come from 2.0? It’s all a “storm in a teacup”, according to the Ramsey, but “it remains to be seen whether the National Party settles down, or not … the alternative is to have a parliament full of people who just go along with the mob … I don’t think that’s what Australians want.”

“I think it might have been a bit of revenge happening because Barnaby didn’t get the leadership,” explained Nationals assistant minster Michelle Landry. “I am disappointed with what has happened. It’s been a torrid couple of weeks. Now they’ve had their ­victory, let’s get on with it.”

When asked whether Michael McCormack’s leadership was safe, Landry gave a very reassuring: “I believe so … yes.”

After his embarrassing Deputy Speaker defeat, McCormack used his first speech to tell everyone he’d walked in the shoes of ­Nationals leaders past. Literally.

McCormack spent the weekend walking the “Tumbatrek” in the Snowy Mountains, made famous by Tim Fischer. He even spoke to Fischer’s wife, Judy, who reflected how her husband would “want us all to stand together”.

And they have, so far. O’Brien passed his first test of being a government faithful on Tuesday by voting to delay the Greens’ federal anti-corruption commission motion. Remember? It’s the one Scott Morrison said he’d establish in December 2018.