Yes, very appropriately it has been. That's right. I've moved on from the Pears soap to the Bovril soup cubes.
The other thing we saw was that, after it was over, the Prime Minister said he was actually never willing to consider proportional representation in the first place. First past the post was unacceptable for reasons he went on at great length about at one point; we would be seeing the last election ever under first past the post. However, when proportionality was presented as an alternative.... As you know, the majority of the committee, the consensus of the committee, everybody except the Liberals, was in favour of a referendum on a version of PR to be chosen and designed by the government, which was to be subject to certain parameters—it being five or less on the Gallagher index—versus the status quo, or first past the post.
When PR was presented as an alternative, the Prime Minister said that he didn't want that. He had his Minister of Democratic Institutions say that her mandate letter said, “I am not to pursue this”. Then the Prime Minister came out and explained himself. He was quite specific about this, saying that he was not one to consider PR, “it's divisive”—I'll let him speak for himself on that—and “I was never willing to consider it. I've been quite consistent. Look, here's what I was saying back in 2012.”
It was extraordinary, a bit like—and I'm showing my age—that entire season of Dallas that turned out to be a dream that Pam Ewing had.