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UNDER THE FLAG

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Tony Abbott becomes the first Opposition leader since 1986 to be thrown out of Parliament after he failed to make an unqualified apology for accusing Julia Gillard of lying about his education policy.

THE Deputy Opposition Leader, Julie Bishop, famously has a death stare that can pulverise diamonds at 50 paces and crack the skulls of grown men.

Has she been offering private tuition to her leader? Yesterday, as the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, left the chamber, having been chucked from question time by the Deputy Speaker, Anna Burke, he threw Burke a look that could have split an atom.

Abbott, the fifth opposition leader to be ejected from Parliament, and the first since 1986 (that was John Howard, not a man known for his maverick behaviour, but we all have bad days), is usually quite affable, as long as you're not the Prime Minister or a tax on carbon emissions.

But yesterday Abbott grew incensed at Gillard's repeated assertions that he intended to rip money from public schools, her defence of the carbon tax, and her defence of government spending on policy measures including the National Disability Insurance Scheme and border protection. (The government would continue to invest in the ''instruments of fairness that Australians want'', Gillard said, somewhat opaquely.) ''That's a lie,'' Abbott said in response to Gillard's claims about his alleged hostility towards public school funding.

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The L-word, of course, is classified as ''unparliamentary language'', a term for the collection of words and idiom that describe what everyone really thinks about politicians but which are impermissible inside the actual Parliament.

Therefore imputations of dishonesty and dishonour are out, as is profanity and, sadly, the term ''fuddle-duddle'' (which, according to Wikipedia, caused quite the scandal when allegedly mouthed by the Canadian prime minister in Canada's House of Commons in 1971).

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A word to the dejected ejected: never say lie