Government fights innuendo with smear

It had to happen, but when the government finally decided to fight innuendo with smear, it wasn't Tony Abbott who led it.

Instead it was the pugnacious Christopher Pyne who turned the opposition's attack over the Arthur Sinodinos affair into a free-for-all involving characters Labor would much rather forget.

For the second day running, Thursday's question time was dominated by Bill Shorten trying to tease more out about the affair, and what the prime minister knew, and when.

He was particularly interested in what Abbott knew last September when he appointed Sinodinos assistant treasurer, and when there was speculation that the corruption inquiry question mark was the reason he hadn't gone into cabinet.

He also probed whether Sinodinos had really just stood aside or whether he'd resigned - and what, in terms of money and perks, is the difference.

Abbott just stonewalled. His standard answer was that Sinodinos had done the right thing and that was all that mattered. He even gave the impression that he enjoyed Shorten's frustrations.

At last, almost inevitably, Shorten moved to demand that Abbott spend 15 minutes telling parliament all he knew about the affair.

The prime minister didn't stick around to listen as Shorten said Sinodinos seemed a decent bloke and was certainly entitled to the presumption of influence.

But the Australian people were entitled to know what was going on.

Abbott, Shorten said, was shifty.

He didn't want the Australian people to know what he knew and he was hiding behind private conversations.

And Sinodinos' original appointment last September was made more in hope that the matter would go away than with due diligence.

Pyne, the government's best bare knuckle fighter, then gave Labor a taste of its own medicine, with interest. After all, he had a much larger and less savory bunch of characters to work with.

Labor, he said was the party which protected the disgraced Craig Thomson, and it had known all about him long before the 2010 election.

It was also the party of the likes of Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi. Greg Combet, a Gillard government minister, had been an ICAC witness and the coalition hadn't called for his resignation.

Pyne reached his crescendo with Labor as the party of sleaze, smear and confected outrage.

The government's numbers crushed Shorten's motion and there the matter, with its heightened emotions, rests until parliament comes back next Monday.