It's a pity top hats are no longer kept handy in a Parliament House closet.
Christopher Pyne could have been accused of talking through his hat.
Alas, Pyne was left on Wednesday to cover his head with no more than a sheet of paper when the mood struck him to hiss and fume and call aloud across the chamber that Labor's Tony Burke was "scum".
The paper hat quite robbed the moment of its gravity.
Should Mr Speaker, Tony Smith, have been in mind of a little personal levity – and Lord, he needs any amusement he can find in what is shaping up as a merriment-free parliamentary period – he might have allowed himself a small internal giggle. Instead, he managed to look stern through it all.
The Federal Parliament sways beneath numerous weird rituals handed down from Britain's Westminster.
None appear freakier than the requirement that parliamentarians must cover their heads if they wish to speak once the Speaker has ordered the doors to be locked to allow a voting division to occur.
And so on Wednesday, when Pyne set to frothing and hollering furiously at the opposition during a division, he had no choice but to grab the nearest piece of paper and shelter beneath it.
There was a time when a self-respecting parliamentarian would simply reach for his top hat, thus granting him (and those days, it always was a him) a certain majesty. MPs removed their hats for normal proceedings, but needed cover to interject into the silence of a division.
It was known as "speaking covered".
Even when the fashion for top hats waned, the clerks in Commonwealth parliaments kept for many years a top hat or two in a handy closet for use as required, and it wasn't until 1989 that the British House of Commons relaxed the rule that an actual hat must be worn before an MP could speak during a division.
Pyne's urgent need to reach for cover came when Labor's Tony Burke accused the government of refusing a "pair" for Victorian Labor MP Clare O'Neill, who is having a baby and unsurprisingly, was absent during a vote on Tuesday.
Here was another venerable parliamentary convention: a pair is an MP designated to abstain from voting while a member of the other party needs to be absent.
"Parliamentary scum," cried Pyne.
And from beneath his sheet of paper, he protested loud and long that Labor had not asked for a pair, and that should there have been a request, a pair would have been provided.
Indeed, Burke seemed a little naughty. Only a couple of weeks ago, he announced Labor wouldn't be providing pairs for the government, which, with its paper-thin majority of one, can't afford to have anyone absent.
We predict there will be a lot of talking through paper hats as this vexed parliament proceeds.
