The Sketch: house in a vortex of colliding dead stars

Tony Abbott arrives for question time. Picture: AAP

As astronomers have just reminded us, two dead stars create gravitational waves when they collide. Which brings us in a roundabout way to the latest episode of the Malcolm Turnbull/Tony Abbott show in question time yesterday.

Abbott, it must be said, was already in his happy place, tweeting earlier, “Progress at today’s party room. The Clean Energy Target has been definitively dropped.”

When he belatedly entered question time the Labor benches were keen to give credit where it was due, greeting his arrival with a forest of pointed fingers and a noise akin to cheering. Abbott did not look displeased.

Such was the gravitational pull in the room, Speaker Tony Smith had to have three cracks at ejecting Labor’s Linda Burney before she finally graced the room with her absence.

For his part, Energy and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg tried to turn things on his opposition shadow, Mark Butler, with a special round of “Who said?” To wit: “Who said that a clean energy target was the second best option, Mr Speaker? The member for Port Adelaide. Who said the government is not listening to the energy experts? The member for Port Adelaide”.

On Frydenberg went, leaving the room on tenterhooks as to whether he’d mix things up or rely on the cumulative power of strategic repetition. In the end, when it finally came, it was the latter.

As Health Minister Greg Hunt rose the gravitational waves began to make themselves felt again. “The electricity guarantee is about two very simple things,” said Hunt.

“Tony,” suggested Labor backbencher David Feeney, before adding the requisite second item: “Abbott”.

Bill Shorten took a longer run up. “Can the Prime Minister confirm that so far he has supported an emissions trading scheme and opposed it, supported an emissions intensity scheme and opposed it, ridiculed direct action and endorsed it …” And on in this vein until you know who. “When the member for Warringah is calling the shots, how can anyone believe this Prime Minister says about lowering bills?”

Abbott smiled like a naughty kid having his misdemeanours catalogued in front of the whole school. Turnbull, for his part, was the picture of a man who’d had a raw nerve stomped on.

“What a pathetic question from the Leader of the Opposition,” he thundered.

Those colliding neutron stars create a faint soundtrack astronomers can pick with special instruments. But during the angry seconds that followed yesterday, they could have heard the PM miles away with their eardrums.