“I knew it was wrong as soon as I made the comment. I apologised and I withdrew as soon as I said it.

“But it shouldn’t have happened. And I also want to apologise to all Australians who suffer from this disability. I regret saying it. It was wrong. It was insensitive. And I apologise.”

Mandy Maysey, president of the Tourette Syndrome Association of Australia, who has three children with the disorder, said Albanese’s apology felt a bit hollow. “He didn’t refer to Tourette syndrome. He is happy to throw Tourette syndrome across the floor as an insult but when he made his apology, he said ‘people with this disability’,” she said on Seven’s Sunrise.

Maysey said people in public often used Tourette’s as a punchline or insult, and the prime minister doing so in parliament would set the wrong example. “Often you can’t go anywhere without people looking at you funny or even just being insulting ... It is really quite a distressing condition to have.

“Tourette syndrome affects one in 100 individuals in Australia, and then you have got the wider community, the families that suffer with it as well. It is socially isolating and for him to just flippantly use it in such an offhanded manner speaks volumes.”

Steele-John on Wednesday said the exchange revealed the lack of understanding of the issue in political culture, which would concern people with disabilities.

“When you look to spaces like parliament that make decisions about your life, whether you get the NDIS supports you need ... and see this type of language used, it causes a lot of fear, to think that the people in here don’t get it. Because them not getting it has huge implications,” he said.

“It says to me that there is a lot of work still to do across the parliament to actually get this ableism out of this place, and replace it with a true understanding of what disability is … and what it looks like to speak and act with genuine inclusion.”

Ruston on Tuesday described it as “absolutely despicable behaviour”.

“Mocking a disability is no laughing matter,” she said. “Australians living with Tourette’s deserve the PM’s respect, not his ridicule.”

She repeated her criticism on Wednesday morning, after the prime minister’s apology, and extended her condemnation to other Labor MPs.

“One of the most disgusting things about his comment is that if you listen to the laughter of those behind him, it wasn’t just the prime minister, there were a whole heap of his colleagues who thought it was funny to mock someone with a disability,” Ruston said on 2GB.

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Liberal senator Jane Hume on Wednesday morning said the comment had been an insight into Albanese’s character, but Housing Minister Clare O’Neil defended the prime minister.

“Jane, you and I both make mistakes in our work in politics. What matters is how we deal with it afterwards, and I think it was good he didn’t pretend he hadn’t done the wrong thing,” O’Neil said on Sunrise.