Weaponising rumour: Australia's new political sensitivity

"Jeez," went Jane Norman, "Senate Estimates is getting Feral. Wednesday: Michaelia Cash threatens to reveal unverified rumours about female staff in Bill Shorten's office. Thursday: Kim Carr suggests James Paterson would've been part of the Hitler Youth. This is #auspol."

Norman, in turn, received a social media rebuke tantamount to a cold shower. The journalist had missed the beat, ignored the register. "Do you understand the word 'Satire'?" shot Socialist Sarah. "Do you as a Journalist have skills in English, Research, History, Politics, or Agribusiness? Do you know how to investigate anything outside your echo chamber?" The political zone that is Canberra finds any concept of satire these days highly repellent.

The threshold of debate in Australian politics has been sewer-low for decades, but the latest turn has added another disfiguring side. The moment Turnbull decided that ministerial sexual conduct would become a matter of regulation in Parliament, the private became political. This public outing has destroyed perspective and proportion on what is relevant in Canberra's political discourse. Innuendo can be used as weapon and shield; allegation can be implied and imputations delivered.

Instead of returning to the drawing board of measured discussion and the jousting associated with interaction in Canberra – policy and legislation needs to be made – political figures such as Cathy McGowan, MP, see the prospect of more regulation and codification.

"The community does have expectations of how politicians behave… that you be honest, that you be trustworthy, that you don't tell lies, but they're not encoded." In doing so, all presumption to propriety, precisely because it requires encoding, goes out the window. The moral and ethical police will be emboldened, and they shall come from all sides of politics.