The Sketch: question time invective reaches new heights as weary Speaker declares a new low

Speaker Tony Smith.

Malcolm Turnbull fired up early in question time about the “smug, slimy insinuations that Labor make about the aspirations of Australians”, a sentence packing more sibilance than a snake charmers expo.

So the mood was truculently set, Labor and the Coalition taking it in turns to cherrypick each other’s quotes with abandon.

As he watched wearily from his umpire’s chair, Speaker Tony Smith’s mood sank. And despite some cheering exchanges — Chris Bowen: “Prime Minister, what is the median personal income in Australia?” Turnbull: “I’ll take that question on notice” — the arc curved downwards.

Smith’s early admonishments were gentle, even extending to an outbreak of furniture-based percussion. “Constant banging on the desks is not acceptable conduct,” he warned. (The more laterally minded reminisced about when Hawke government minister John Brown and his wife Jan Murray got frisky on a surface normally reserved for paperwork. But then, they weren’t constant.)

As question time rolled on Smith grew ambidextrous, ejecting Labor and Liberal MPs alike — not least former freedom commissioner Tim Wilson, who scored an hour’s compulsory liberty.

But the nadir was yet to come. The fault probably lay with one of the most cherished phrases in Labor’s armoury, which was given one of its runs yesterday by ­Michelle Rowland: “Can this arrogant and out-of-touch PM confirm that under his tax scheme a telco executive from Sydney’s upper north shore earning a million dollars a year gets a tax cut of over $7000?” Given all the Telstra executives being rendered income-free yesterday, it was an ­example that could have done with a bit more thought.

But the crucial bit was “this ­arrogant and out-of-touch PM”, which Labor jams into questions with such frequency it has long since completed its journey from cheeky novelty to eyeroll-­inducing to roughly as welcome as a ground-glass enema.

Possibly with this in mind, Labor frontbencher Julie Collins shelved the glass and began with something mercifully fresher: “Why is this snobbish PM …”

Smith pulled the stylus off the vinyl. Then his voice did coldly flow. “I’m going to address an issue with this question — indeed, with a number of questions that have been grating with me for several days now — and that is the use of these abusive tag lines that are in them.”

It was more than just Smith’s Disappointed Dad routine. His voice was an aural portrait of sadness fumbling about for dimly remembered vestiges of anger.

“My personal view is that this demeans the house because it leads to very aggressive questions that have statements in them that simply aren’t questions. That particular question has taken it, I think, to a new low.”

A breakthrough for our times.