An old political maxim holds that people get the government they deserve. But how in the name of all that is holy did we deserve to begin the parliamentary year with a Hatfield and McCoy shootout in the National Party? It’s not like summer hadn’t already been ruined. And just as the weather improved, the fires were quelled and the smoke cleared, the gates of Hades opened again and a new horror crawled out to dominate the news.

After running through a decade’s worth of A-roll leadership challenges (and some repeats), we were condemned to watching the B-roll of internal ructions in the junior Coalition partner, our eyes clamped open as all the seven deadly sins of politics were played out by a semi-professional cast.

The nation was treated to the spectacle of yet another leadership spill courtesy of Barnaby Joyce last week. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Here was naked lust for power, a glutinous unappeasable appetite for appearing on Sky News, a greed for the baubles of high (and even sadly low) office, a slothful waste of public time and money, wrath at just about everything, envy of those in the flash seats and a staggering delusional pride that imagines your party and nation cannot possibly live without you.

So how did we get here? How in God’s name do we get out? And how can our mostly harmless nation of just 25 million souls deserve this?