When Jeff Kennett was asked to comment on John Barilaro's call for Malcolm Turnbull to resign on Friday, he suggested the Prime Minister would be looking forward to getting away for Christmas.
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Mr Kennett also said Mr Barilaro, not Mr Turnbull, was the one not showing leadership, that the Coalition had 18-months to prepare for the next Federal election, and even a week could be a long time in politics.
He was certainly right on the last point. It has, for Mr Turnbull and his supporters, been the week from hell.
First up was the dismal performance of the merged Liberal National Party in the Queensland elections. While, on the upside, One Nation only secured a single seat, it used its 13.69 per cent of the primary vote to topple sitting members, including four Brisbane-based LNP MPs.
When the PM sought to distance the Federal Coalition from the debacle, which saw the Palaszczuk-led Labor Government likely to be returned, that set off alarm bells in the Nationals camp.
Members of the minor party were already working on ways to differentiate themselves from their Liberal counterparts in order to reduce their vulnerability to similar One Nation attacks in the future.
This was manifest in growing support for the long standing push by some Nationals, including "Wacka" Williams and Barry O'Sullivan, for a Royal Commission into the banks.
When it became apparent to the PM, his inner circle and the big four banks themselves, that a banking inquiry bill could be passed next week, Mr Turnbull and Mr Morrison were forced to act.
The PM withdrew his long standing objections to such an inquiry and announced it would be going ahead. Mr Morrison described it, quite accurately, as the Government's "least worst option".
Not even an artfully contrived stoush over JJJ's decision to shift its top 100 countdown from Australia Day and the latest revelations in the ongoing train wreck that is Senator Sam Dastyari's political career, could keep this embarrassing back flip from dominating the news cycle.
The two things that should have played in the Government's favour, the Dastyari scandal and the passage of the marriage equality bill through the Senate, effectively counted for nothing.
The real winner has been Bill Shorten who could have been seriously damaged by his ALP right ally's Chinese connections under normal circumstances.
But, as previously noted, this last week has been anything other normal thanks to Mr Turnbull's need to appease both his own far right faction led by Tony Abbott and his Coalition partners.
The most important question posed by Mr Kennett in his short commentary on the news from the front was "but who would they replace him with anyway?"
Given Tony Abbott is well past his use by date, Scott Morrison lacks the charisma to lead and Julie Bishop has only ever performed well in the Foreign Affairs space, that could be all that is keeping Mr Turnbull in a job for now. There are no easy answers for either Turnbull or the coalition, for whom Christmas can't come soon enough.
