The Germans call it fremdschämen - that feeling which invades the stomach when you witness someone embarrassing themselves and realise they have neither the wit nor acuity to feel it themselves.

After Thursday's antics inside Parliament House, the Turnbull government just calls it Ian Macdonald.

There is a certain macabre irony in a politician whose most recent contributions to the public discourse have involved shushing others and wrestling with a noisy iPad timer, complaining MPs don't get paid enough.

But when it comes just a day after his own Prime Minister deploys wealth as a weapon of personal destruction against his chief political opponent - at the same time his party attempts to position itself as anti-establishment and justify cuts to some of society's most vulnerable - it only serves to reinforce every negative cliché ascribed to politicians.