It was, however, a memorable example of the concept of a minister taking responsibility for impropriety, even if it was inadvertent. Ministerial responsibility has rarely been defined satisfactorily. John Howard tried early in his term and lost seven ministers in less than a year for various sins relating to conflicts of interest and expenses and travel rorts. The current Australian government, however, has turned the concept on its head. With fast-gathering regularity, ministerial responsibility appears to have all but decayed to no responsibility. Daily now the nation is assaulted by revelations of conduct that would get the cold shoulder in a shearer’s pub.

It is as if Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s homespun motto, "Have a go and you’ll get a go", has transformed in the hands of some of his team to "let’s have a go at having a lend of the mugs". And the buck stops where? Morrison - who admittedly wasn’t leader when at least some of the rot was setting in, and has weathered a rocky and anxious six months as leader - has displayed little taste for calling to account wilful colleagues. Australia has rarely witnessed the level of political madness currently on display. As the federal election rapidly approaches, there is no hint of a minister willing to step aside for transgressions real, alleged or imagined that would, in virtually any other time, have consumed a government. Instead, you can just about detect an odour infecting certain halls of the Parliament: desperation and denial mixed with things decomposing in the shade.

Whether this wretched state of affairs would be improved by a change of government is not at all certain, though Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and his colleagues profess themselves appalled by the Coalition’s standards. Loading The bar has slid so low for so long it will take a mighty effort to drag it up again. And the historical portents aren’t cheering. Well-documented voter contempt for Australia’s political class didn’t begin with the Coalition’s astonishingly frequent change of leaders, of whom Morrison is simply the latest. The cascade of leadership knifings and subsequent political turbulence began with the overthrow of Labor’s Kevin Rudd for Julia Gillard in 2010, and Australians have barely been able to draw breath ever since.

It is instructive that of the 12 ministerial resignations during both Gillard and Rudd administrations from 2010 to 2013, every one was sparked by anger over the installation of the latest leader, rather than any wider principle. In short, there was no reason but self-interest. And whatever Shorten might say, he was a major player in each of Labor’s leadership coups. Nevertheless, Australia has rarely witnessed the level of political madness currently on display. The AFP says Michaelia Cash did not provide what would be defined as a witness statement. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer Police only this week told a Senate committee that two ministers, Michaelia Cash and Michael Keenan, had failed to provide witness statements to investigators concerning their prior knowledge, or lack of it, about raids on the offices of the Australian Workers Union. The police say they believed they had enough evidence to mount prosecutions, but had been told by the Director of Public Prosecutions that in the absence of enough evidence, there was no reasonable prospect of convictions.

Senator Cash has now declared she made a statement...by sending the police a copy of the Hansard record of her answers to a previous Senate committee. Could she be having a lend, as Labor senators accuse? Curiosity also surrounds revelations about the the failure of the Finance Minister, Mathias Cormann, to notice for more than a year he hadn’t paid for international air tickets supplied to his family by the Liberal-connected boss of a travel company that holds a lucrative government travel contract. US ambassaor Joe Hockey in Washington DC. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Cormann has now paid the $2700, but questions wafted across the globe to Washington, where Australia’s ambassador and former federal treasurer, Joe Hockey, now resides.

Hockey, a friend of the chief of the same travel company, Helloworld, was reported to have arranged for his embassy staff to meet a Helloworld executive as a subsidiary company prepared to pitch for a commercial arrangement with Australia’s diplomatic service. Helloworld is run by the federal Liberal Party’s chief fundraiser, Andrew Burnes, and Hockey is one of the company’s 20 biggest shareholders. The government says Hockey did not participate in the meeting, had no role in the tender process and had declared his interest in the company. Loading And what is it upon the air around Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton using a front page story, leaked to The Australian, as evidence that Labor-backed legislation on medical evacuations for refugees would undermine border security? What are we to make of it now the chief of ASIO has declared the newspaper’s story misrepresented ASIO advice, and that such leaking "undermines all we stand for". It’s only a couple of weeks ago, too, that more than a few observers felt they detected a whiff of something distinctly off about Liberal MP Tim Wilson using a parliamentary committee he chairs and turning it into a platform for protest about Labor proposals on removing franking credit rebates for retirees. Others thought they detected the scent of things that grow in the dark when Dutton declared he had no "line of sight" over the decision to award contracts worth $422 million to an operator known as Paladin for security and other services on Manus Island.

The contract wasn’t granted to the Australian arm of Paladin, which previously flew so far under the radar it was registered to a beach shack in South Australia. Instead, it went to the Paladin entity that was registered to a PO Box in Singapore, a bureaucrat in Dutton’s department reassured the Senate committee trying to get to the bottom of the matter. Dutton snorted that the whole thing was nothing but a distraction from Labor’s support for evacuating asylum seekers from Nauru and Manus, who he claimed included people of "bad character". That scent of fear: it was everywhere, and the government was trying to manufacture it. There was evidence, of course, that the fear of asylum seekers might be turning voters off Labor: the first Ipsos poll since the Parliament passed the refugee medical bill showed a sharp tightening in recent days between the fortunes of the Coalition and the ALP.