The Coalition, having suddenly discovered the inequities of the Question Time process when they entered Opposition, have been pushing for reform of this honoured part of our Parliamentary theatre. Good on them.

But I suggest a more fundamental reform than time limits or supplementary questions. Let’s make it five minutes long: both sides come into the chamber, and the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition and one minister or shadow minister on each side get up and do the grab they want to see on the evening news, and then they all go back and get on with doing something productive. All finished before we usually get to the end of the first answer from Kevin Rudd.

“What about ministerial accountability?” I hear a single, rather feeble voice cry out. Well, given this Opposition couldn’t arrange a ministerial execution if you gave them a crate of rifles, a blindfold and a cigar, there’s no disadvantage there.

By the way, I wonder how Ian Campbell feels about Peter Garrett’s survival as Minister? When it comes to unfair attacks on a Minister, Garrett’s got nothing on Campbell, who you may recall lost his job in the same portfolio only because the revelation he had a completely innocuous meeting with Brian Burke happened to coincide with the Howard Government’s futile pursuit of Rudd over his own meetings with the prominent West Australian lobbyist.

Still, politics is a funny old game, luck’s a lottery and you’ve got to be in it to win it.  Or something.

The Opposition tried to switch attention in Parliament this week to the Prime Minister’s role in the insulation program. This morning some in the media had taken up the line. “[The Opposition] says the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd must give a full explanation to Parliament next week, detailing all the warnings he was given about the program,” AM reported this morning.

But back up a second. Parliament sat this week. Why wasn’t he asked to give a full explanation this week? Well of course he was. And he did. “Is he seriously telling the House that he was never informed about the safety problems, fires and deaths under the home insulation program?” Tony Abbott demanded yesterday. “Will he now inform the House when he was so informed and who finally informed him?”

Rudd thanked Abbott for his question and answered in detail. Mind-numbing detail, over 600 words of it. On and on it went: “On 14 August, I received a letter… On 17 August, the relevant cabinet committee considered… On 27 August 2009, I received a letter… On 28 August… changes to the program guidelines were released… On 4 September, I wrote to the minister…”

Rudd almost caught our attention when he briefly stumbled over his words around about the 28th of October, but then resumed his remorseless progress: “On 2 November 2009, I replied to the minister…” November and December came and went with various pieces of correspondence and moments of consideration. Eventually we made it into February.

There’s the normal Rudd long-and-boring — when Christopher Pyne gets up and makes repeated points of order about how irrelevant, long and tedious the Prime Minister’s answer is — and there’s super Rudd long-and-boring, when everyone gives up and just waits for him to finish.

And still there hasn’t been one Opposition question — not one — about the Green Loans debacle which is now receding at a rate of knots from media awareness.

From the Government’s point of view, all that was a distraction from repeatedly belting the Opposition over health, having worked out from Tuesday’s Question Time (to the extent they hadn’t worked it out before) that the Coalition would very much prefer not to talk about health, thanks very much. Unfortunately, Tony Abbott’s own distraction from health reform — paid parental leave — had blown up so badly that by yesterday there were no questions from the Opposition on it but plenty from the Government itself.

It felt like those extended assaults on the Opposition that marked much of Malcolm Turnbull’s time as leader, when the Government’s heavy-hitters would stand up to belt the Coalition for 90 minutes and then Craig Emerson would be sent in at the death as a sort of warm-down comic act. It’s fascinating to political tragics and the Press Gallery, who watch each perfomance avidly and eagerly explain who won, who lost and why afterward. It also, most assuredly, affects the mood and body language of politicians.

And it’s utterly irrelevant to 99% of the population.