By David Marr
''PHO-NEY!'' yelled the government benches in perfect harmony as Tony Abbott came to the despatch box. The daily brawl was under way. To a wall of howls, groans and snatches of song, the Prime Minister battled to say nothing new about pink batts.
Two Liberals were thrown out. "On yer boat," yelled Labor's Sid Sidebottom as the opposition spokesman for punishing refugees, Scott Morrison, headed for the sin bin.
La, la, la, la, not listening... Rhyming Slang covers his ears as Kevin Rudd hammers home nothing much.
Each question was worse than the last. By number three - government hypocrisy over government advertising - the opposition was baying for blood, an animal sound I haven't heard since playground brawls at Gordon Public a very long time ago.
Bronwyn Bishop, doing what she could to bring chaos to the disorder, was silenced by the Speaker before she uttered a word. Limp in her hands was a copy of Standing Orders bookmarked like an evangelist's Bible. Her mouth sagged in disbelief.
Question time didn't draw much of a crowd. Even a heavily subsidised state theatre company would go broke with figures like these: at least 20 stagehands in uniform on the floor of the house plus a few hundred expensive politicians - and the public galleries only 30 per cent full.
Half the spectators were ushered in and ushered out like tourists at the Bolshoi. Children sat stunned. Word of mouth over the next hour did nothing to put more bums on seats. Fair enough. The public hasn't got a dog in this fight.
One bunch of hypocrites who spent millions on government advertising in the Howard years is brawling with another bunch of hypocrites spending millions on government advertising after denouncing the practice all through the Howard years.
Rhyming Slang called this "looting the treasury to pay for the government's re-election campaign". He's right. But he should talk.
Maybe there was an era when parliamentarians sat up straight and paid attention in the House. Not now. Even in the tumult of question time, half of them were slumped over one electronic device or another.
Belinda Neal, in what may be one of the last weeks of her public life, was on her BlackBerry, thumbs flying. Perhaps threats. Perhaps job applications.
Up the back on the other side, Malcolm Turnbull was showing off his weekend purchase of a 64-gig, WiFi and 3G-connected iPad. He was always at the cutting edge: back then he was first in the chamber with a Kindle.
To his bemused companions he demonstrated the iPad's capabilities, tapping the screen as if totting up a cafe bill. Two flat whites: tap. The pastrami baguette: tap. Sparkling mineral water: tap.
When government and opposition swapped benches to defeat Rhyming Slang's no confidence motion in the Prime Minister - "for repeatedly failing to keep his promises" - Turnbull tucked his new toy under his arm and carried it across the chamber. He wasn't going to trust it to Labor.
And he could show it off to fresh companions. Out came the finger again: tap, tap. A reborn Turnbull is recruiting Liberals for his vision of the future one by one.