The Oxford English Dictionary defines a gaffe as a “blunder, an instance of clumsy stupidity, a ‘faux pas’”. It evokes a sense of triviality rather than high seriousness. If one’s clumsiness results in the outbreak of war, it would not usually be considered a mere gaffe.

Nor are gaffes ordinarily seen to result from the unworthy impulses of spite or cruelty. No one would call Robodebt a gaffe. It was far worse than that. Gaffes normally imply absent-mindedness rather than deliberation.

So, what are the gaffes that have been most significant in Australian political history? What are the blunders that have mattered?

The Commonwealth of Australia was founded on a blunder.

The governor-general of the day, Lord Hopetoun, commissioned William Lyne as the first prime minister of Australia. Hopetoun had only recently arrived in Australia, and as there would be no federal election until March 1901, an interim government needed to be formed in the meantime.

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Lyne had recently become premier of New South Wales, the most populous of the colonies. To a newcomer unversed in local politics, making him prime minister seemed like a good idea.

But Lyne had been a longstanding opponent of federation of the colonies and was deeply unpopular with those who had worked for years to bring it about. Leading politicians, such as Edmund Barton, refused to serve in his cabinet.

Lyne returned his commission. The episode has been called the Hopetoun Blunder.

Gaffes, however, often tend to be more about words than actions.

One of the most memorable to have occurred in the Australian parliament was on 19 October 1955. Herbert Vere Evatt was leader of the opposition and had overseen – and helped trigger – a split in the Labor Party.

Entangled in that crisis was the defection the previous year of Soviet........

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