It's the day that we're meant to be taking a stand against bullying, and right on cue, our MPs have given us a handy guide to the ugly behaviour we should be looking out for, writes Annabel Crabb.

Happy National Day Of Action Against Bullying And Violence!

Across Australia, schools and workplaces are celebrating this important diary landmark in whichever way they feel appropriate.

The Australian Senate, for example, opted to kick things off with a dusk-till-dawn pyjama party of contumely and invective, in which big kids picked on little kids, the kid with glasses got teased repeatedly about his skivvy, everyone shouted at everyone to shut up, and the phrase "I fart in your general direction" was actually used.

The Coalition party room, meanwhile, is marking the occasion with an internal whispering and chain-letter campaign to bully the Prime Minister and the Education Minister out of supporting a schools programme to stamp out bullying.

Let's start with the Safe Schools programme, to which a swathe of federal Coalition MPs has developed a sudden and violent objection. (Perhaps this is a response driven by shock and surprise. The Safe Schools programme is only six years old, after all, and only four education ministers have ticked it off - two Labor and two Coalition. It's all happened so fast.)

Conscientious objectors to the idea of gay or transgender teenagers being given information that makes them feel less isolated or abnormal have been scuttling around all week compiling a petition to hand to the Principal. (This was a cue for their opponents to respond with a classic move straight from the Grade 5 playbook: nick and hide the petition.)

For this is the beating heart of the dispute about the Safe Schools programme, some of whose materials (on cross-dressing, for instance, or safe sex) some MPs have found confronting. Opponents are all fine with the idea of being nice to gay or transgender kids; they're genuinely keen for them not to be bullied, so long as the kids still understand that they're freaks.

Gang leader George Christensen, a Liberal National Party MP from Queensland, has been letterboxing material to his colleagues including an incriminating 1982 article in the journal Gay Information penned by an academic whose practical connection to the Safe Schools programme seems clear to Mr Christensen, but less so to others.

It would appear that Mr Christensen's subscription to Gay Information lapsed some time ago, however, judging from this exchange at a doorstop yesterday in which he explained how being gay works (transcript thanks to The Guardian).

Journalist: Do you think (sexuality) is a choice? Christensen: Obviously it's a choice ... Or they can be born that way. They can choose it. Journalist: Well which one is it? Christensen: Whatever it is. If the person is born gay, then they're gay. If someone makes the choice that they're going to have homosexual sex, that's up to them. It's a free world.

It's worth noting Mr Christensen's colleague Warren Entsch's acerbic remark that some of his colleagues could use a little remedial education in these delicate matters themselves before making any further demands.

In this callow sea of taunt and counter-taunt, who could possibly have predicted that it would be Christopher Pyne - one-time youngest MP in the House of Representatives, notorious playground pugilist and a man so perennially boyish that one suspects a raddled portrait somewhere in his attic - who would author the wisest contribution of the day? He said:

I was minister for education so I am familiar with the Safe Schools Coalition. I took the view that the materials in it weren't directed at me, they were directed at a younger audience and that bullying in schools was unacceptable. I took the view I shouldn't bring my 48-year-old attitude to these materials because I have children of my own and if they were being bullied I would want them to have the support they need.

The main issue keeping the Senate up all night, meanwhile, was its radical internal decluttering proposition: the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill 2016. Otherwise known as "Senate Voting Reform".

Just as a recap: The Government is for it. The Greens are for it. Labor is against it. So are some of the crossbenchers who very reasonably suspect that the abolition of the present Senate voting system, in which parties hunker down together and decide among themselves how vast shoals of preferences should be allocated, would mean curtains for them and their ilk.

The die is cast here. The Government has the numbers. The bill will go through. The only reason the senators stayed up all night to shout and spit at each other, weep, jeer, quote Monty Python and tease Richard Di Natale about his photo shoot with GQ magazine, is that the Government and the Greens are loath to use their numbers to shut down debate and ram the thing through and be done with it.

Yes, that's right. You understood correctly. The last 24 hours happened because the Senate does not want to look bad.

If this is the way the Australian Parliament celebrates Anti Bullying Day, let's hope to God they've dispersed before Harmony Day rolls round on Monday.

Annabel Crabb writes for The Drum and is the presenter of Kitchen Cabinet. She tweets at @annabelcrabb.