Could prime minister Tony Abbott have had a spot of liquidation playing on his mind when he dropped Malcolm Turnbull into the ocean during question time on Thursday?

This is, as anyone who watches the ABC knows, the parliamentary killing season. It's a term that refers to the habit of leaders to find themselves executed by the ambitious in the last weeks of winter parliamentary sessions.

The Opposition was busily trying to upset Abbott's boat with a query regarding people smugglers and the allegation that the government was now paying them to turn around their boats and disappear back over the horizon.