When Turnbull stood up in Parliament to answer a question from Opposition leader Bill Shorten, the chamber was gripped by the sort of drama and tension that characterised the final days of the John Gorton-led Liberal government in March, 1971, or the last weeks of the Robert Menzies-led war-time government in July-August, 1941.
Was Turnbull proverbially plunging the sword deep into the flesh of his nemesis' political career? The answer proved to be pretty much "yes".
After months of dithering, maybe Turnbull decided to act on the words of the great Florentine political tactician, Niccolo Machiavelli: "Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared."
