IN RECENT months, attendance at parliamentary question time has been on the wane.
The press gallery's ranks are thin; yawning gaps have opened up where once journalists jostled up closely together like overplanted young carrots.
Why this lack of interest?
Mainly, it's because question time has stopped being an event at which anything is learned.
Ministers use it to read out deadly answers; the Prime Minister uses it to garden his extensive document library and to conduct experimental work on his emerging wall-of-sound technique in the field of oratory.
The Opposition uses it to get on television, either with increasingly preposterous props or with howling, down-the-camera-barrel appeals to middle Australia. Hardly ever, any more, do you see a question time during which the Opposition hunts, traps and parries the Government.
Yesterday was different.
When the Prime Minister entered the chamber at 2pm, he was fresh from delivering a few kind words over the ministerial grave of his first cabinet casualty, Joel Fitzgibbon.
The Opposition didn't bother with the still-warm form of the former defence minister, however; Malcolm Turnbull was hoping for a bigger fish.
The Senate estimates process, which to date this year has been just as moribund as question time, had yielded a promising line of inquiry.
When Turnbull began asking questions about the Prime Minister's supposed advocacy for an Ipswich car dealer who for several years has provided Kevin Rudd with a ute, a new mood of intrigue enveloped question time.
The ute-driver himself feigned boredom; he showily smothered several yawns and attended to his paper stacks, which appeared yesterday encased in individual plastic pockets.
The Opposition got Wayne Swan involved; according to his own officials, he's passed on some concerns on behalf of the car dealer involved. "Go for your life," the Treasurer snarled. "But you're up a dry gully."
The sense of intrigue mounted, until Rudd - on receipt of a note from his staff - found himself in a position to deny having made any interventions on behalf of the dealer.
Quaking with rage, he demanded that Turnbull apologise.
He accused the Liberals of corruption, of throwing children overboard, of beggaring HIH, of everything bar the marketing of alcopops to children or the covert placement of amphetamines in the water supply.
"This is the politics of fear being replaced by the politics of smear," he thundered, trembling forefinger pointed at the Coalition's ranks.
When he sat down, his hands were shaking. "You grub," he hissed at Turnbull, over the dispatch box.
Why Rudd has a ute provided by a businessman is one question. Why he got quite so upset about it is another.
But it's nice to have question time back.
This article first appeared on smh.com
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