You couldn’t blame the group for that – they came from across the ditch.

But there has been a certain deja vu when it comes to our prime ministers, a sense of an ongoing Shakespearean, or even Roman, tragedy since Bob Menzies retired not out.

His replacement, Harold Holt, died tragically but ever since then it has been a case of “Et tu, Brute?” for our prime ministers, with their careers ended, either by their own party or an ungrateful electorate.

John Gorton fell on his own sword, helped by Malcolm Fraser. His replacement Billy McMahon, the beneficiary of Fraser’s machinations, tripped over his own incompetence and lost the Liberals government after 23 years.

Gough Whitlam’s flame burned brightly briefly before it was snuffed out, again by the machinations of Fraser, aided by Governor-General John Kerr. 

Then it was time for Fraser to cop a bit of humiliation of his own when the electorate gave him the boot, after two record-breaking election victories.

Bob Hawke engineered that humiliation and became the most successful Labor Prime Minister of all time. Then he fell victim to one of his own in Paul Keating.

Keating then won an unlikely election, humiliating John Hewson along the way, before being kicked out by the electorate, for John Howard, who became the second-most successful Liberal PM after Menzies.

But the higher you climb the further it is to fall and Howard became only the second sitting prime minister to lose his seat at a general election.

Labor’s Kevin Rudd felt the sting of his own party, who saw almost certain electoral defeat coming their way, and dumped him for Australia’s first female prime minister.

Despite accumulated scar tissue between her shoulder blades, Julia Gillard went on to win a narrow election victory before falling victim to Rudd’s revenge.

Rudd then suffered humiliation for the second time, allowing Tony Abbott to ascend to power.

Abbott had spent considerable time criticising the Labor Party for throwing out a first term, prime minister, “elected by the people”.

We all know the prime ministership is something given out by the party room not the electorate.

But perhaps Abbott was looking into a crystal ball and preparing his future defence, as a first-term prime minister, “elected by the people”.

Abbott had beaten Malcolm Turnbull by only one vote in the challenge for the leadership of the Liberal Party.

So it seemed only appropriate for Turnbull to deliver Abbott’s humiliation.

But the bully boys of the right wing media had foreseen Turnbull’s ascension and had tried to circumvent it.

Turnbull overcame that hurdle and just weeks ago looked set to score a glorious election victory.

But it would seem Abbott, and his supporters, are not about to lie down.

As such, he is now a bit on the nose with the electorate and Labor has made an amazing comeback in the polls.

But its leader Bill Shorten, who engineered Rudd and Gillard’s defeat by their own party, will almost certainly suffer a similar fate if he gets the big job, because that’s what those in the Labor Party do.

Perhaps if our leaders showed a bit more humility there would be less humiliation.