Labor's Tony Burke, opposition manager of business, might as well consider a future emptying night carts, for his motion, a thing of fury, and his long list of gruesome complaints against Ms Bishop, foundered. His life, you'd imagine, will barely be worth living. Prime Minister Tony Abbott bows as he votes on a procedure division to deny the opposition a no confidence motion against Madam Speaker Bronwyn Bishop. Credit:Andrew Meares Worse, perhaps, he was accused of being a "sook" by the carefully coiffed Christopher Pyne, who invoked Paul Keating to inform him cheerily that opposition was a dreary life of cold cups of tea at 11 o'clock at night, and three long years of it lay ahead. It had been coming for months, of course, as Ms Bishop cut down Mr Burke's attempts to move points of order, as he tried to argue with Madam Speaker's rulings, as he watched his colleagues tossed from Parliament day after day, as he was taunted by Mr Pyne, and as only this week, he had sought vainly to persuade Ms Bishop that outbreaks of laughter from the opposition benches did not constitute unparliamentary behaviour. Mr Burke has not been an obvious favourite with Ms Bishop since the first day, back in November, she ascended the throne she had so long desired. Feigning to welcome her to the high office of Speaker, he offered that he found the moment reminiscent of the Harry Potter novel in which the evil witch Dolores Umbridge is made headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

It's been downhill from there, reaching the basement on Thursday when Mr Burke's colleague Mark Dreyfus QC, shadow attorney-general, found himself named by Ms Bishop and thrown out of the chamber. His sin? According to Labor, he had cried out, during a moment of tumult in the chamber, "Madam Speaker". Never since Parliament formed in 1901, Burke frothed, had anyone been named for calling out the words "Madam Speaker". Or "Mr Speaker", for that matter. Shortly after failing in his attempt to move no confidence in Ms Bishop's Speakership on the grounds of bias, for disporting herself as a mere instrument of the Liberal Party, for misinterpreting standing orders and for gross incompetency in administration of Parliament, Mr Burke launched into a scorching list of dreadfulness that, he argued, had already persuaded everyone in Australia she was not impartial.

Why, Ms Bishop had thrown 98 MPs out of her chamber, and every one of them was from the opposition - a record. Mr Pyne presented himself as Ms Bishop's champion, accused Mr Dreyfus of being an aggressive bully and declared that in fact, he, Pyne, held the title for being ejected from the chamber by Labor-appointed Speakers. "I'm no sook," he declared, adding that Mr Burke, with all his complaining, had proved himself one. Labor's Anthony Albanese entered the fray, claiming it was sad that Ms Bishop had "chosen the low road of partisanship rather than the high road of independence that this office demands", and if a football game threw up a score of 98-0, the home crowd would be jumping the fence. Through it all, Ms Bishop sat scarily motionless, her eyes suggesting she was indeed witnessing Sodom in its moment of destruction. Loading

And then it was over, and Ms Bishop was still safe on her throne, silently willing, surely, for Tony Burke to turn to a pillar of salt, and to stay that way. Follow us on Twitter