There was a time when, on the first Tuesday of the month, the treasurer would be told in the middle of question time what the Reserve Bank had done about interest rates.
The treasurer would then take a question enabling him to announce the decision and put the government's spin on it.
No longer. The bank this Tuesday kept rates at what's starting to look like a permanent 2.5 per cent and not a word was said in the house. It was exactly what was expected.
But another message came through, from the Senate rather than the bank, and that put the government into a fit of of triumphalism.
"The Senate has just repealed the mining tax," Joe Hockey announced. "The mining tax is now gone."
Technically, that was a bit premature for the amended legislation still has to come back to the house. But getting it through the Senate was what matters.
Hockey used the occasion to lecture Labor on its irrelevance. The opposition, he said, had dealt itself out of issues like the carbon and mining taxes and would only become relevant if it started to believe in something.
Question time as a whole was a smorgasbord, with Labor's main attack on the freezing of the superannuation guarantee, presented as yet another broken government promise.
There were insults and asides, old and new and of varying quality.
Tony Abbott revived "Electricity Bill", a hangover from the days when the carbon tax rather than the mining tax was the worst tax in the history of the universe.
When Hockey boasted about rising business expectations, Labor's Pat Conroy offered an explanation: "Because you were sick yesterday."
Out he went.
Christopher Pyne, promoting his proposed changes to universities, was at his cheeky best.
He borrowed and adapted lines like "this government is the best friend students ever had" and "Dare I say it, I give a Gonski."
When Shorten switched from questions to a motion condemning Abbott, he produced a candidate for ponderous insult of the year - "Recidivist fairy tale teller of political lies".
He was sharper with some asides.
To Pyne: "You've never seen a student you wouldn't harm."
To Hockey: "I'd just be quiet and not remind anyone you're here, mate."
But it wasn't all like this. Early in the session Abbott and Shorten were all solemn grace together over the grisly business of dealing with the MH17 outrage.
That bipartisanship lasted about five seconds.
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