Has Australia just declared war on brave little New Zealand, or at the least, its Opposition Labour Party?
Is Australia's Opposition Leader, Bill Shorten, the southern hemisphere's version of wicked Vladmir Putin, using "foreign powers" for his own ends?
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Barnaby - the butt of jokes
Watch what had the Labor Party roaring with laughter during question time.
And, without meaning to be mean, is New Zealand really a "foreign power", and a potentially hostile one at that?
Improbable as any of these propositions sound, you'd have to conclude - after listening to Australia's Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, at full splendid flight - that they are the new realities.
We are living, of course, in the days of diplomatic intemperance everywhere.
But Ms Bishop and colleagues seemed to be channeling the wilder elements of the era of Trump as they ripped in to Shorten and his colleagues for persuading a Labour MP across the ditch to ask a question that dropped Barnaby Joyce right in it. The result of the manoeuvre was to get official confirmation from the New Zealand government that Joyce was indeed a New Zealand citizen.
The Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, railed that this amounted to Shorten entering an international conspiracy to try to bring down Australia's government.
Ms Bishop was not so constrained.
![Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce during question time.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170818001415im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/w/j/z/4/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gxwq9z.png/1502834370454.jpg)
"New Zealand is facing an election," Ms Bishop said. "Should there be a change of government, I would find it very hard to build trust with those involved in allegations designed to undermine the government of Australia."
In short, if the current NZ Labour opposition won government in a few weeks, well, Wellington may as well just go and call itself Pyongyang.
![Julie Bishop said she would find it difficult to trust New Zealand if Labour were elected.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170818001415im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/w/f/1/3/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gxwq9z.png/1502869290301.jpg)
This later drew a naughty question, ruled unparliamentary, from Labor's Tony Burke.
"If the Foreign Minister won't be able to work with the New Zealanders, how will the Foreign Minister be able to work with the Deputy Prime Minister [Barnaby Joyce]," Burke asked, drawing one of Ms Bishop's feared death stares.
In Parliament, Ms Bishop, having dropped a ballistic missile on the NZ Labour Party just weeks out from an election, advanced the argument - apparently without irony - that "it is a principle of international law that nations do not seek to interfere in the domestic political processes of other countries".
Ms Bishop's colleague, the irrepressible Christopher Pyne, decided to beat the war drum even louder.
"The Leader of the Opposition [Shorten] has shown he is quite happy to plumb new depths, to collude with other political parties, this one in New Zealand, to undermine the Australian government," he frothed.
In the Pyne version, the adventure in New Zealand might have just been the start of the international wickedness.
"How many other foreign governments, or foreign political parties in other countries, has the Labor Party been colluding with to try to undermine the Australian government?" he demanded to know.
"Has he been talking to the people in Indonesia, or China, or the Labour Party in the UK?"
Pyne forgot to mention Russia's Mr Putin, but we got his drift.
He seemed barely more than a breath away from suggesting a special counsel should be appointed to investigate possible treason.
These are exciting, or at least extravagant, days.
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