Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has thrown back a well-used barb at the coalition which was often aimed at Labor during the turbulent years of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government.
"If the Liberal party can't govern itself, how on earth can they govern the country," Mr Shorten rehashed when addressing reporters in Burnie, Tasmania on Sunday.
Mr Shorten's jibe follows what he described as one of the "most remarkable" weeks in federal politics where Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his predecessor Tony Abbott openly attacked each other on the floor of parliament.
They also clashed at the NSW Liberal conference on Saturday, which Mr Shorten said resulted in reform measures that were no more than a bandaid over the bitterness and division which racks the Liberal Party.
Senior government minister Mitch Fifield was reluctant to bite into the apparent rift, claiming things have gone "incredibly smoothly" since the change of leadership just over a year ago.
However, he said it was important for the party to treat former prime ministers with respect.
"The obverse of that there is a particular duty that former prime ministers have to look to the welfare of the Liberal Party," he told Sky News.
His ministerial colleague Christopher Pyne accused Labor of stirring up a storm in a tea cup.
"They are busily trying to distract people from their own civil war by creating red herrings on our own side," he told ABC television.
Controversy over possible changes to the importation of the Adler shotgun as trade-off for a crossbench senator's vote caused the open friction between Mr Turnbull and Mr Abbott, overshadowing government business in the latter part of last week.
"We have had more elegant weeks as a government," Senator Fifield conceded.
The senator, who is the manager of government business in the Senate, said so-called horse trading for a crossbencher's vote was nothing new, and something governments of all persuasions had entered into - former independent Tasmanian senator Brian Harradine being an "absolute classic".
"The number of call centres that he secured ... in relation to various pieces of legislation, at one point there was a genuine concern Tasmania was going to sink under all those call centres that he had secured for them," Senator Fifield said.
He was hopeful of gaining Senate crossbench support for legislation to reintroduce the Australian Building and Construction Commission and the registered organisations bills, which were passed by the lower house last week.
He said Labor should also back the bills if they wanted to clean up the trade union sector.
Labor frontbencher Ed Husic conceded the way Senate numbers were falling at the moment, the bills were more likely to pass.
"Will it actually lead to better productivity, better safety and better outcomes in the construction sector? Based on previous experience, no," Mr Husic told ABC TV.
"And it's more likely that that will be replicated now."
