There was a time when federal parliamentary Question Time was the best show in town. The people came in droves in hope of seeing one of then Treasurer and Prime Minister Paul Keating’s sporadic star rhetorical turns.

Now, sometimes, it was disappointing; sometimes he skated over the edge into crude and brutal language. “Dogs returning to their own vomit,” is the one most often recalled.

But his best moments were classic parliamentary theatre. He had a rare ability to mock his opponents in such a way that they too had to laugh. He drew material from an astonishing range of sources.

Thus he might pick up on an exhibit of Australiana at the Old Parliament House down the road and suggest John Howard be included with all the other 1950s relics like “Astor TV, the AWA radiogram and the Morphy-Richards toaster”.

When John Hewson became Liberal leader and brought forth his comprehensive plan for economic reform Fightback! it in turn brought forth from Keating a long-running gag based on the Warner Brothers cartoon series Road Runner.

Mike Bowers/The Global Mail

Julia Gillard chuckles as Greg Combet dispatches barbs from the despatch box.

For those unfamiliar with the cartoon (there may be one or two of you out there), its premise was simple. Wile E. Coyote tried to catch the speedy Roadrunner, and always failed. His attempts usually involved ridiculous complex devices, often assembled from parts which came in boxes marked “ACME”. Invariably they would blow up in the coyote’s face, or he would fall into a canyon, or an anvil would drop from the sky onto his head.

Well, Keating got himself a copy of Fightback! and slapped a big “ACME” sticker across the front and kept it in the top drawer of his desk beside the despatch box.

Whenever he felt the urge, he would reach in and grab it, and start riffing on the Rube Goldberg-like complexities of Hewson’s plans, suggesting that the anvil would fall on his head — and in due course, it did.

Or Keating would find parallels between politics and the cracker nights of his childhood: John Howard reminded him of “that thing called the flower pot” which “often, when you lit it up, it went pffft”, while Bronwyn Bishop was the catherine wheel which would “go off and they'd take off, spreadeagle the kids, burn the dog, run up a tree and then fizzle out going around in circles”.

There were innumerable other examples: he drew them from popular culture, from classics, from Labor history. The firework thing was inspired by a comment by one of his heroes, Jack Lang, who Keating quoted as having once told him:

“Look, I'll tell you this, Paul, never be worried about the skyrockets of politics. At first a shower of sparks and then a dead stick falls to earth.”

To be present on one of the days when Keating was “on” was a rare pleasure. And the galleries, press and public, lapped it up.

But the show ended on March 2, 1996, when the ineffably dull John Howard came to power.

To be fair, there was Howard’s deputy leader Peter Costello, who could occasionally put on an entertaining turn in Question Time. It has never the same, though, and it possibly will not be the same again.

But there is now again a comic talent in the House of Representatives: Climate Change Minister Greg Combet.

Now, I know what you’re thinking — he’s that serious, bespectacled chap who we sometimes see on TV. Straight shooter, safe media performer, but not riveting.

Mike Bowers/The Global Mail

Mike Bowers/The Global Mail

Mike Bowers/The Global Mail

Mike Bowers/The Global Mail

Mike Bowers/The Global Mail

In the house though, he can be very funny. And, as mentioned in a previous blog, he now has a wealth of material to work with, as reality shows Opposition leader Tony Abbott’s dire predictions of the effects of a carbon tax to be false.

On Wednesday Combet riffed on the carbon tax price effect on staples like milk and cereal. On Thursday he chose as his subject the effect of the tax on Australia’s spring racing carnival.

Having noted that Abbott had predicted the carbon tax was a threat to “the whole Australian way of life”, Combet hastened to assure racing fans that there was no cause for alarm.

“Treasury modelling showed the carbon price impact on sport and recreation will be only 0.3 per cent, or around 20 cents a week,” he said.

“Fashion at Flemington [the style slice of Melbourne’s track], it’s going to be okay because last week’s CPI [consumer price index, the measure of inflation] showed women’s clothing… the prices actually fell by 0.2 per cent in the September quarter.”

What people who cared about racing needed to understand, he continued, was that Abbott’s scare campaign on the tax was “the biggest shakedown since the Fine Cotton affair in 1984.

“And the ring in that day was called Bold Personality… and that’s all we’ve had.”

It was time for the “Liberal Party stewards” to intervene and consider a substitution, he suggested, and offered a form guide of alternative Liberal leaders.

One time leader of the Opposition, Goldman Sachs man and renowned barrister Malcolm Turnbull?

“A classy thoroughbred if ever there’s been one. He was badly checked by the Member for Warringah [Abbott, who deposed him] in the 2009 race.”

Shadow treasurer Joe Hockey — who was absent, having just been chucked out for interjecting?

“He’s hungry for a win but he’s demonstrated yet again today that he’s not up to Group One racing level.”

What about deputy leader of the Opposition Julie Bishop?

“Three times runner up. Surely a chance at last.”

And Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison had promise but for the fact that he was spooked by foreign horses.

It was a good riff. Not quite Keating perhaps, but it had the same effect: even the Opposition benches laughed, Malcolm Turnbull appearing particularly amused.

Not as amused as Julia Gillard, though. One gets the feeling she is looking forward to further mirth at the expense of the ACME Carbon Tax scare campaign.