From the pure peaks of bipartisanship to the grubby depths of muckraking, with much tumult in between.
That was question time on Thursday.
Being the last question time of the week, the tumult was not unusual.
Bronwyn Bishop tried to quell it with an offer of early flights home. That's her gracious way of saying shut up or get kicked out.
In the beginning, however, it was all courtesy.
That was mainly because Canada high commissioner Michael Small was there to hear Tony Abbott assure everyone that Australia stood "shoulder to shoulder with our Canadian comrades" in the fight against murderous extremism.
Bill Shorten agreed. On dealing with Islamic State and related matters, there's not a cigarette paper between them.
Labor quickly turned to Ebola, a security matter on which there are differences between the parties.
Abbott was relatively restrained, saying the United Nations had praised Australia's response, acknowledging that the US and UK would like Australia to do more and "appropriate risk-mitigation procedures" must be in place before he would send teams to West Africa.
The government, meanwhile, kept the temperature low with a series of questions about security arrangements. The answers, shared around the frontbench, involved much repetition. Labor, of course, couldn't complain about this.
So it moved on to the "unfair and chaotic budget" - Catherine King's words - and the dire consequences the GP co-payment would have on diagnostic services and especially cancer screening.
Abbott gave what's becoming his standard answer.
A "well-known and well-loved former prime minister" had once proposed a co-payment, he started - and everyone knew what was coming.
Abbott soon spelt it out. Bob Hawke was a leader, Bob Hawke was a reformer, he said before turning on Shorten.
He was grateful to Shorten for bipartisanship on national security, but on economic security he should lift his game.
Scott Morrison and Greg Hunt took questions from their own side on protecting borders and reducing power bills, respectively, through abolishing the carbon tax.
The only point of these seemed to be to bait Labor, and they did it so successfully that no one could hear anything over the roars and feverish gesticulations.
Then Anthony Albanese asked Andrew Robb, who includes tourism in his collection of portfolios, about Tourism Australia using his family restaurant, The Boathouse at Sydney's Palm Beach, in a promotion.
Much of the indignation in parliament is clearly confected.
Not this time. A grim-faced Robb's denial of improper behaviour and his accusation of grubby muckraking looked utterly sincere.
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