The Sketch: ask and you shall receive ... a putdown

Scott Morrison, Christopher Pyne and Josh Frydenberg head into question time yesterday. Picture: AAP

When Bill Shorten continued his question time quest to get Scott Morrison to explain why Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership ended, ScoMo did not answer. But he was only too ready to share the findings of his own investigation.

“I know who the Australian people do not want to be the prime minister,” he said in a tone that made it clear surprise was not on the menu. “The Leader of the Opposition!”

Question time also brought mentions of the brutal drought, and fumblings over gay teachers, an issue given an extra frisson by Josh Frydenberg, whose earlier forthrightness might or might not have brought him into contact with constructive criticism.

But amid the shadows, light. When Coalition backbencher ­George Christensen asked a dixer of Michael McCormack, the ­Nationals leader responded so effusively that a man of lesser constitution might have blushed.

“You need his vote,” called a Labor MP, loudly alluding to ­rumours some Nats are keen to end the leadership-spill drought now stretching into its eighth week.

Nevertheless, McCormack had the cheery buoyancy of man mistakenly sledged that morning by broadcaster Alan Jones. “This is McCormack … ooh, he’s woeful,” Jones had said more in anger than sorrow, railing against him for his criticisms of the Coles drought relief fund. Except the criticism was actually made by Agriculture Minister David Littleproud. Misfires like that can lift a man’s spirit.

Labor’s Joel Fitzgibbon, possibly pining for the days when he got to shadow Barnaby Joyce, had a go at stirring the possum: “Prime Minister, is it true the (agriculture worker) visa is dead or is the former leader of the Nationals, or indeed leadership hopeful, correct when he says there is no such thing as dead in politics?”

The question found the PM in a tart mood. “The member for Hunter does a pretty good impersonation of the walking dead in politics,” he replied. Which is one of those lines that, by the grace of Newspoll, may well come back to haunt him.

ScoMo again lifted his big stick as he urged dole recipients to go fruit-picking. Nikita Khrushchev might have got thousands of Soviet youngsters out on the farms by flogging it as a socialist adventure, but that presumably wasn’t a sales pitch that made it on to ScoMo’s shortlist.

Things wrapped up on a mixed note. “Can I issue on behalf of all the house a very warm welcome to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex?” ventured the PM.

“No!” boomed a Labor voice uncannily like Julian Hill’s.

“Bring on the republic!” cried another.

With the mood helpfully set by his own troops, Shorten rose: “I join with the PM in welcoming our visitors.”