The Sketch: behold, it’s a fair dinkum Muppet show of hands

The Prime Minister in question time yesterday: ‘That was a big zinger! Let’s play that game again’. Picture: AAP

As question time rumbled into life, some Labor MPs were still shouting about Scott Morrison’s ­Muppet show.

But not frontbencher Terri Butler, who was thinking about the PM’s bumpy foray into social media late last week. That was the unexpected break from regular programming in which his team took a clip from question time — one of him getting his troops to raise their hands if they’d owned a small business, and so on — then overlaid it with one of the few ­family-friendly segments from the Fatman Scoop hit Be Faithful.

Utilising a lyric from that doomed clip yesterday, Butler called out: “If you’ve got a $100 bill, get your hands up.”

There were no immediate results, but as John Howard proved, sometimes you just have to hang back in the knowledge the times will come to suit you.

For Angus Taylor, there was no time like the present to take onboard the PM’s coining of “fair dinkum power”. Limbering up, the new Energy Minister declared: “We’re going to back investment in fair dinkum reliable generation because that’s what this country needs.” With this fair shake of the power source, it was clear big-dinkum energy has taken hold.

The man of the hour was Aged Care Minister Ken Wyatt, who copped so many questions from Labor’s Julie Collins it felt like a Four Corners tribute act.

His recent partial knee replacement got a workout as he commuted back and forth between the dispatch box and his distant corner of green leather.

Wyatt was milder than Clark Kent on a spring day, but not so his colleague Christopher Pyne.

“Rubbish!” Pyne cried at Collins, a judgment passed with such vigour that Speaker Tony Smith ordered him to cease interjecting. Labor MPs in turn passed their own judgments, “Hear hear!” and “Very good ruling” among them.

Wyatt pushed on, eventually reaching for the dream of a “bipartisan approach”. It was not a dream shared by one Labor MP, who opined, “You’re hopeless mate! Resign!”

Inevitably, Bill Shorten asked: “Why isn’t Malcolm Turnbull still the prime minister of Australia?”

Then, following a quick summary from the PM of the government’s many achievements during its half decade of power, Shorten tried to give things a helpful nudge: “He is explaining why Malcolm Turnbull should still be the PM. I am asking why he isn’t.”

“That was a big zinger!” cried Morrison, his face lighting up with fair dinkum energy. “Let’s play that game again.”

Without the aid of Fatman Scoop, he got his troops arms flexing even harder than Wyatt’s knee. “How many of those on this side have made sure the unemployment rate is coming down?” and so forth.

The government benches turned into a forest of arms.

For Butler, at least, her brief investigation was at a close. “Well,” she noted, “I guess they’ve all got a hundred dollar bill.”