It is called the killing season in Canberra for a reason - a curiously fractious time of year when weakened leaders hit the fence - Simon Crean, Kim Beazley and Malcolm Turnbull spring to mind.
They are among others, usually in opposition, who have fallen in the dying days of the parliamentary year when earlier optimism among colleagues gives way to disappointment and thoughts turn to another year in the wilderness.
All were victims of the poisonous concatenation of the two necessary pre-conditions for a change: the threat of a challenger and the opportunity while all are in Canberra to bring it about.
That both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott have survived the season this year without even a challenge is a victory of sorts - and don’t think they don’t know it.
Indeed assuming no further unforeseen moves, 2011 will be an historical oddity: you have to go all the way back to 2004 to find a year in which there has been no change of leader on at least one side of politics.
Think about it.
That year, 2004, John Howard was prime minister and Mark Latham was opposition leader.
There was an election but it changed nothing.
Early 2005 however saw the Werriwa Walloper’s calamitous leadership finally peter out.
In 2006, it was his replacement, the capable but uncompetitive Kim Beazley who looked to be safe before the dream-team ticket of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard suddenly crystallized offering defeat-weary colleagues new hope.
Of course, that bit of creative thinking worked a treat leading to another change in 2007, namely the defeat of the unbeatable John Winston Howard after nearly a dozen years at the nation’s helm.
Now in 2008, it was the Coalition’s turn to behave like an opposition with Liberals putting the hapless Brendan Nelson to the sword in September.
His replacement, the charismatic Mr Turnbull lasted longer before his support collapsed spectacularly just as the 2009 parliamentary year looked to be over.
That upheaval led to the perverse but as it turned out, prescient choice of Tony Abbott.
Then there was the big one: 2010. Who could forget Labor’s crazy-brave decision to tear down a sitting prime minister in Kevin Rudd, smashing the political chessboard and resulting in a nil-all drawn election, a hung parliament and a minority government.
Even this year, for much of the preceding couple of months, the killing season threatened to deliver again as Julia Gillard’s poll numbers went through the floor.
Yet Ms Gillard lived to fight another day, her resilience under extreme duress impressing even her fiercest critics.
This is no idle assertion. In one of his trade-mark moments of frankness, Tony Abbott admitted as much to Canberra journalists on Tuesday night when hosting Christmas drinks expressing surprise that the Government had not “cracked” under his relentless assault.
It was telling because it went some way to vindicating concerns in his own partyroom that the Liberal leader had so concentrated on blasting the government out that he had forsaken longer term policy rigour.
The other fierce critic is of course the man who wants her job even more than Mr Abbott, the afore-mentioned Kevin Rudd.
While he’s not going away and remains a threat to Ms Gillard in 2012, his 2011 chances evaporated when the PM’s anaemic polling began a slow rise off the bottom.
While the last minute change of Speaker was not typical of the killing season pattern being both a voluntary departure and not a leadership position, it has nonetheless continued the tradition of unpredictability during the final sitting days in Canberra.
Its implications for the Gillard government next year are fascinating, particularly in terms of the Andrew Wilkie ultimatum of withdrawing his support for the Government if it fails to pass his anti-pokies changes.
The sting has come out of that threat and suddenly, Labor is more than one by-election away from defeat.
But like Ms Gillard’s costly carbon tax reversal arrived at after private talks with the Greens party, and her ill-advised secret midnight deal with the same party this week to secure the mining tax, the back-room shenanigans to put an Opposition MP in as Speaker reeks of chicanery.
It has left a nagging sense that the Gillard Government will do what-ever-it-takes to win up to and including elevating an Opposition MP of doubtful quality.
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