The response of Tony Abbott's colleagues to his latest wilful overreach at the dispatch box in parliament was unmistakable.

By the time the punchy Prime Minister was on his feet again just minutes later, the air had been sucked from the government balloon. Rarely have iPhones, tablets, and even constituent mail been so universally compelling.

Invoking the name of one of history's most appalling individuals, the Nazi propagandist and genocidal maniac Joseph Goebbels, would be a grievous error in any argument, but for a prime minister to gratuitously pull it out of nowhere to describe the Opposition Leader in Parliament was everything Abbott's critics complain about.