Grim Reaper pulls up a pew as mob cries ‘doomed’

PM Malcolm at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture Kym Smith

After a meeting that amounted to a lurch closer to political death, it seemed only fitting that Malcolm Turnbull walked with colleagues down a sunlit corridor and past a forest of Aboriginal burial poles, each one an exquisitely painted cylinder that redefines the concept of going down the tubes.

Over in the House of Representatives a bit later, Jenny Macklin carried on like Terry Pratchett’s version of the Grim Reaper and spoke in capital letters: “I’VE SAID IT BEFORE. UNFORTUNATELY I’LL HAVE TO SAY IT AGAIN. WHO IS THE PRIME MINISTER?”

“Can I just remind you your microphone is working perfectly well,” said Speaker Tony Smith, trying to ward off eardrum perforation. He may as well have tried to stop a lava flow with his hand.

Then question time got under way in an unfurling series of booby traps. When backbencher Chris Crewther asked the PM a Dorothy Dixer that finished with the standard flourish (“Are you aware of any alternative approaches?”), the Labor benches transformed into a forest of index fingers pointed at the freshly backbenched Peter Dutton — softer and brighter, like a washing powder commercial — up in his new pew.

This harbinger, however, was not clear enough, and Turnbull began a trial separation from whatever remained of his political instincts and broached Labor’s leadership tensions.

The Labor figure who’d earlier told this sketchwriter, “these ­people are so bad at politics it f..ks with my mind”, probably experienced no change of heart.

His own role in leadership ­putsches safely behind him, Bill Shorten tried a motion of no confidence and got busy firing barbs at point-blank range, including: “You never fight for anything you ­believe in”, and “You are as weak a PM we’ve seen since Billy McMahon.” Despite the flaying, Turnbull’s nemesis Tony Abbott barely looked up from his paperwork.

When Shorten’s stint came to an end, Turnbull nearly managed to accidentally second the no-confidence motion. His attempt at a reply was even less successful, his near-death experience having not prompted a spell of reflection. His half-hearted caning of Shorten was followed by a second attempt at writing his own epitaph, but unlike Monday’s version, which at least had a taut poignancy, this gave a sense of the bleak, yawning eternity of the great beyond.

It took Deputy PM Michael McCormack to come to the rescue, abandoning his air of hapless bonhomie to get very cross indeed. Tony Burke returned fire by setting up a rhythmic chant of “Doomed!” from his colleagues. Back and forth it went like a Wimbledon rally stripped of joy, until Christopher Pyne decided the ­occasion called for some alliteration and characterised Shorten’s speech as “venomous, vicious, ­vituperative”.

It’s no end, of course, just a pause as Dutton undoubtedly ponders Paul Keating’s 1991 demonstration that it’s the second time that’s the charm. It must all seem very unfair to Turnbull, but so it goes. When one of Pratchett’s characters moaned there was no justice, Death agreed with a sigh: “NO, THERE’S JUST ME.”