If there were an Olympic sport where the winning team was the one that scored the most own goals, the Coalition would be draped in gold after its performance in the sitting fortnight just gone.

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From net zero to immigration, the gymnastic contortions were breathtaking, master classes in the fine art of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

First gold went to Barnaby Joyce. We mistakenly thought his sporting career was over when he took that spectacular dive off the Canberra planter box last February. How wrong we were.

To demonstrate he's still very much in the game - and that his ability to make a fool of himself is as sharp as ever - he lobbed his anti-net-zero private member's bill onto the parliamentary court.

Panicked when Labor agreed to have it debated, Barnaby reportedly got on the blower to Andrew Hastie, one of the few people left in the Coalition who can string a coherent sentence together, pleading with him not to cross the floor and vote for his bill. Bad for *cough* leadership stability, he said, and bad for Hastie, who'd find himself on the backbench - alongside yours truly. GOAL! Straight into Barnaby's own net.

Second gold went to Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. As the rest of us wondered why a gang of Nazis fond of camping in the Grampians in short shorts had called for migrants to be sent back to where they came from, when their own leader is a Kiwi migrant, Price added her two cents' worth.

Jaws dropped - in the ABC studio, on Afternoon Briefing host Patricia Karvelas's face, in the offices of Coalition MPs and across the Indian-Australian community - when Price accused Labor of ramping up immigration from the subcontinent because, you know, Indians vote Labor. GOAL! GOAAAAL!

Price walked back her comments, refused to apologise and blamed the ABC for making her utter the ludicrous claim. A conga line of embarrassed senior Liberals, including leader Sussan Ley, followed up the own........

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