They saved the best until last.

Yesterday our federal representatives decided there hadn't been quite enough mayhem, number-fixing and full-throated bellowing during this parliamentary year.

So they spent the last sitting day throwing a little more sugar our way.

The first and only warning we had of the drama about to unfold was the tremor in Speaker Harry Jenkins's voice as he opened Parliament at 9am. It sounded like he had a cold. He didn't.

Our cranky, wordy Speaker, sparring partner of Christopher Pyne and creator of the Harry Grumpiness Index (or HGI), was about to announce his resignation.

No more would his non-dulcet cries of ''OrrrDAH!'' echo through the chamber.

It was a shock, although just how much of a shock, and to whom, became increasingly opaque as the day wore on.

It was no shock when Peter Slipper, the Queensland Liberal MP who has had repeated fracas with his own party, stepped into the breach with the full backing of the government.

It's never a good look to lose an MP, or, as Opposition Leader Tony Abbott called Slipper at a hurriedly convened press conference, the ''gentleman in question''.

But then, the opposition is in opposition. It doesn't need numbers, it just needs to make the government look bad.

And the government did look kinda bad.

Slipper, whose nickname is ''Slippery Pete'', is not a man of unblemished reputation, as he acknowledged when he spoke of the ''colourful stories'' he trails like tentacles.

The Liberal Party reared him but now the Labor Party was apparently adopting him.

At 12.30pm, the chamber was full for the vote.

Following the nomination of Slipper, Pyne put forward multiple other options for Speaker. He led a roll call of every modest and hard-working Labor backbencher of whom you have probably never heard. Anna Burke was nominated, she declined. Dick Adams was nominated, but turned down the honour. Kirsten Livermore refused.

''Surely there is one member of the Labor Party who believes they could be the Speaker in the Parliament?'' Pyne cried.

Question time followed, and it would have been frankly disappointing if Abbott had not finished the year as he spent it, with a move to censure the Prime Minister. This was ''extraordinary'', he said. One of the most ''squalid political fixes'' ever seen.

Julia Gillard, for the first time, stayed to speak against the motion herself.

Four Coalition MPs were ejected and one Liberal backbencher, apparently believing the Parliament had not covered itself in enough glory for one day, yelled: ''Sit down you horrible woman!''

Proof, if it were needed, that democracy is messy. And yet it still works, somehow, and has managed to lumber on for another year.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/out-with-a-bang-as-unexpected-fireworks-light-up-final-sitting-20111124-1nwzl.html