The Sketch: questions to Morrison’s shrinking government a turn-up for books

Prime Minister Scott Morrison with Kelly O'Dwyer during question time. Picture: Gary Ramage

“Has the government given up on even pretending to govern?” asked Bill Shorten, the threadbare new parliamentary sitting calendar revving him up early in question time.

Scott Morrison obliged with an early Christmas present: “This is a leader of the opposition who thinks all he has to do is to turn up in parliament.”

“At least we turn up!” Labor roared.

Then Chris Bowen invited Josh Frydenberg to illuminate the house: “Why has the Treasurer cancelled at the last minute his planned trip to meet with his international counterparts at the G20, the leading forum of the world’s major economies?”

Summoning his indefatigability, Frydenberg endeavoured to manoeuvre around unhappy rumours he’d been kept Canberra-bound by the surly bonds of domestic turmoil.

Amid the ensuing cacophony, Speaker Tony Smith’s instruction — “Treasurer, stop talking for a moment, thank you” — only succeeded in making the place explode with laughter. Even ScoMo smiled.

Along the way, Frydenberg had a dig at Andrew Leigh for a piece he’d written for The New York Times: “The member for Fenner, when he writes about Australia overseas, he talks it down.”

Cue a bottleneck as Bowen and Leigh both hurtled towards the dispatch box. The Speaker looked at Bowen and asked one of parliament’s timeless questions: “What’s the member for Fenner doing?”

As would eventually transpire, Leigh was trying to table an old Frydenberg article in Britain’s The Spectator — titled “Short memory” — in which he was unkind about then prime minister Julia Gillard. A small extra amusement is that the article also sank the slipper into a PM for not “representing the country meeting fellow world leaders abroad”.

Still, it couldn’t all be light entertainment and ScoMo set about listing Shorten’s shortcomings. Setting aside all recent turmoil, he courageously concluded, “All you will find is ambition as he took down one leader after the next.”

Across the way, Julia Banks — the Liberal MP who went to the crossbench — chatted with Kevin Hogan, the Nat who went to the crossbench.

Kelly O’Dwyer was again pressed on her reported lament about the Liberal Party being seen as a hotbed of “homophobic, anti-women, and climate change deniers”. After much procedural argy-bargy, O’Dwyer arrived at the dispatch box fired up: “I thank the member for her question. It gives me an opportunity to be able to explain again to the house how this government is the natural government for Australian women.”

This was not received in the spirit in which it was intended, but O’Dwyer gamely pushed on, outlining reasons this was the case. Among them: “We are a government that believes in smaller government.” Certainly a belief Banks has helped with.

Eventually, the din of question time came to an end. This made it so much easier to hear whispers another Liberal MP — Craig Kelly — might follow Banks’s lead.

Smaller government is one thing, but this is getting ridiculous.