Welcome back to your weekly federal politics update, where political correspondent Brett Worthington gets you up to speed on the happenings from Parliament House.

A prime ministerial brain snap in the House of Representatives brought with it a new meaning to the often heard phrase "the ayes have it".

This wasn't a case of ayes being cast in a vote, but rather eyes widening in shock.

Under pressure and reverting to his worst instincts, Anthony Albanese used Tourette syndrome as an insult levelled at shadow treasurer Angus Taylor.

"Have you got Tourette's or something?" he said. 

"You know, you just sit there, babble, babble, babble."

The looks on deputy prime minister Richard Marles and early childhood education minister Anne Aly's faces said it all.

Close inspection of the footage shows Marles's eyes dart as his mouth slightly opens. 

Aly was less convincing at hiding her surprise. Her mouth opened widely as she quickly turned her head, before then biting down on her upper lip and slightly shaking her head. 

It's not the first time a PM joke has gone bad recently. Not that long ago he was met with silence as he attempted a crass pronoun joke at opposition leader Peter Dutton's expense.

But this time the PM knew all too quickly just how far he'd fouled. 

Albanese immediately withdrew the comments and apologised. He later returned to the chamber again that evening for a second bite of the apology apple. 

PM not the only one apologising

Albanese wasn't the only politician needing to apologise this week.

Liberal MP Tony Pasin didn't even last 10 minutes before being punted from question time on Wednesday.

The South Australian is a regular for getting sin-binned in QT but this week's mere eight-minute effort must surely be a personal record.

Pasin was given his marching orders having lashed out when speaker Milton Dick said the Coalition's heckling "particularly when a female minister was on her feet" was disrespectful and unparliamentary.

Pasin replied "really" and "that's rubbish", prompting Dick to kick him out.

When he didn't go quietly, Dick called Pasin back and demanded an apology. 

After initially offering a caveat to his apology, Pasin finally offered a simple "I apologise" before quietly leaving the chamber. 

'Bickering' over how to mark October 7

Albanese's regrettable slur came amid a fiery Question Time, in which the parliament was unable to find consensus to mark the first anniversary of Hamas's October 7 terror attacks.

That Labor, the Coalition and the Greens were unable to find common ground, even on something as anodyne as a parliamentary motion, neatly sums up the political discourse the federal parliament has seen on the issue. 

The war in the Middle East has ripped the deepest of fault lines between the parties. 

The Coalition voted against Labor's motion because Dutton deemed it too wide-reaching, particularly the paragraph that called for the cycle of violence to be broken, the need for de-escalation and lasting peace for Israeli, Palestinian and Lebanese people in the region.

The Greens abstained because it didn't condemn the Netanyahu government for war crimes, acknowledge the "unfolding genocide in Gaza" and pressure Israel to "stop the invasions of Palestine and Lebanon".

The whole situation left independent Allegra Spender, whose electorate has one of the biggest Jewish populations in the country, left shaking her head. 

"I was not part of the bickering of the major parties that has led to this divided house today and I am so disappointed," she told the parliament. 

"I condemn October 7, I condemn the actions of Hamas, I mourn the Israelis that have died but I also mourn the innocent Palestinians and Lebanese civilians that have died. These people are somebody’s children. I wish that we as a parliament could come together and lead unitedly."

Voice referendum marked with a swipe at the PM

The now year-long war erupted just days before Australians resoundingly rejected the Voice the Parliament last October.

Ahead of the anniversary of the referendum, one of the architects of the Voice has taken a swipe at Albanese, in a new round of Monday morning quarterbacking. 

Constitutional lawyer Megan Davis told the AFR that Albanese should have called off the referendum when internal polling showed it was facing inevitable defeat. 

"If I was in government, if I'd been elected a leader, and I had polling that suggested that the referendum might not win, I would have pulled up stumps," she said from Harvard, where she's a visiting professor. 

Davis argued that delaying the referendum might have helped build support — a suggestion that's been met with pushback within parts of the government who argue the vote should have occurred much earlier, not later. 

But could a Voice be coming to parliament?

If newly minted independent Fatima Payman gets her way, a Voice will be coming to parliament. 

Unveiling her curiously named new party, Australia's Voice, the former Labor senator vowed she'd run candidates in the upper and lower houses at the next election. 

Try as Labor might to force her to give up her own seat and re-contest the next election, Payman insists she'll be serving the remainder of the six-year term she won as a Labor candidate.

While the party has a name, it's yet to formalise its position on issues. It is, however, open to donations, as Payman confirmed on Wednesday. 

Even without policies, it's facing backlash from a range of Indigenous leaders who spent decades crafting the Voice to Parliament. 

"For the name now to be appropriated for political gain is deeply concerning and offensive and I'd call on the party to reconsider their name," Yes campaigner Marcus Stewart told the ABC. 

DPS under investigation, but good luck getting details

It's been quite the year for the government department tasked with overseeing Parliament House, the Department of Parliamentary Services (DPS).

There's been accusations of a toxic culture, the silencing of dissent and the routine cover-up of problems. There were revelations about a relationship between the department's boss, Rob Stefanic, and deputy, Cate Saunders, that led to Ms Saunders leaving the public service with a more than $315,000 payment. 

And then it emerged late last week, according to the Guardian, that the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) had conducted a raid on the department. 

The NACC confirmed to the ABC it had carried out "operational activity" that was part of an "ongoing investigation" that "does not relate to a current or former parliamentarian".

Finding out what is happening at DPS is notoriously difficult thanks to an "interim" law then-Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese introduced more than a decade ago to exempt the department from freedom of information requests. Now as PM, Albanese has shown no signs he's looking to remove the exemption anytime soon, a decision transparency advocates have admonished. 

It's not just the department that isn't keen to answer questions. It's easier to extract a tooth than elicit fulsome responses from the parliament's presiding officers, speaker Milton Dick and Senate president Sue Lines, who oversee DPS. 

One of the only ways left to get detailed information from the department is Senate estimates, the next round of which will take place next month. 

After an at-times painful to watch grilling earlier this year, it emerged on Wednesday that Mr Stefanic is unlikely to attend the next hearing. 

In an email to DPS staff, he announced he was taking a "period of leave" for an unspecified duration, with deputy Jaala Hinchcliffe becoming acting secretary. 

Hinchcliffe was an interim commissioner at the NACC before joining DPS earlier this year. 

Think Canberra's bad? Just look at 10 Downing Street

It's no secret that much of the last year, as Queen Elizabeth would have said, has been an annus horribilis for Albanese. 

But if it's any solace for the PM, he need only look over his shoulder in the House of Representatives this week to see how much worse it could be.

Sitting on the floor of the parliament was former British PM Liz Truss, whose tumultuous time at the top famously failed to outlive a lettuce. 

Her successors, albeit having served for much longer than Truss, too haven't been without troubles.

Since winning a whopping majority just months ago, Labor PM Keir Stamer has faced backbench revolts and seen leaks against his chief of staff force her out of her job. 

It wasn't Truss's first Canberra trip, having previously attended the capital's swampiest of events, the Mid-Winter Ball, when visiting as trade secretary in 2019.

But she could have been forgiven for shuddering when she stepped foot in the House of Representatives, a green-clad room not too dissimilar from the colour of a lettuce.