Everything seemed to close in on Julia Gillard in August 2012, when the country's first female prime minister faced a personal crisis over a past relationship and an AWU slush fund set up in the early 1990s.
Exasperated, Gillard called a press conference in Parliament House's Blue Room, where she stayed as long as the questions flowed. At nearly 75 minutes, it was a gruelling, bravura performance.
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This correspondent half-joked to her staff afterwards that perhaps they should forget about everything else and simply take out full-page ads in the major newspapers featuring a massive close-up of the PM with a single word across the bottom: GUTS.
By then, toughness was her defining characteristic.
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Compare this now to the meek capitulation over climate policy we've seen in the past few days. As of Monday, an orderly review of the government's Direct Action was going to consider, among other issues, a baseline and credit, electricity sector specific, system of carbon permits.
By Wednesday morning, it was dead. Killed by nothing more than the prospect of unrest.
Panic over a nascent backlash from within the Coalition party room, revealed in that instant, that even after an election had been fought and won - albeit narrowly - Malcolm Turnbull governs a party that is more in charge of him than the other way around.
Just as Gillard had been slave to the destructive terms of her promotion over Kevin Rudd, Turnbull's leadership stands on a reactionary plinth of hostiles who will ensure that he does it their way, or not at all.
Apart from the dismal lack of intellectual rigour in the assurances that no carbon pricing nor emissions trading will ever be considered, there are the questions this raises about consistency, and unavoidably, about political leadership.
That Turnbull has never backed a carbon "tax" per se is true. But so what? This was mostly sophistry of a type common in politics with a little dig at Tony Abbott thrown in, because he actually did seem to favour it at one point.
What Turnbull had stood for prior to taking over as Liberal leader was well known. Here's three things: emissions reduction through carbon trading at a market price; mature evidence-based policy communicated to voters through sophisticated explanation rather than infantile slogans; and strong innovative leadership.
Compared to Gillard's, Turnbull's government has many things going for it. But courage unfortunately, isn't one of them.
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