The Senate has used some post-budget downtime to formally call out Senator Fraser Anning over made after last month's Christchurch terror attacks.
The bipartisan motion saw nearly all sides of the chamber tear him a new one, politically.
Liberal Senate leader Mathias Cormann said Australia wouldn't tolerate the "divisive, inflammatory commentary", while Labor's Penny Wong would not even speak Anning's name.
The controversial Queensland Senator says his "only crime was telling the truth".
There's a full wrap up of the comments , but the real question is: if Anning's job performance review is clearly so terrible - why can't we just fire him?
Censure in name only:
Realistically, a censure is no more than a political slap on the wrist. It's an expression of the Senate's disapproval of actions or policies they see as having a negative impact.
It doesn't have any practical consequences and there isn't any real constitutional or legal fallback.
In Australia's political history, there have been a lot of censure motions.
Prime Minister John Howard was censured twice for his involvement in the Iraq war in 2002.
And four years ago George Brandis was censured for saying he had lost confidence in Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs.
In no case has a politician been booted from their jobs for it.
So why don’t they just fire Anning?
Bringing the federal parliament into "disrepute" (or disgrace) is not a fireable offence. A politician can't be dismissed.
But it wasn't always this way.
Once upon a time it was possible to fire politicians. In 1920, Liberal PM Billy Hughes dismissed a Labor MP for a public speech criticising Britain.
But in 1987, parliament introduced Section 8 of the Parliamentary Privileges Act, which declared:
A House does not have power to expel a member from membership of a House.
That means there's no chance - even with a bipartisan approach, like was seen today - that a fellow Senator could expel Anning. Calls can only be made for his resignation.
The federal Parliament could push to amend the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987 to allow expulsions. But this is unlikely, even though there is bipartisan support for the censuring of Fraser Anning.
Which means for now, the only way we could see Fraser Anning's employment status change is at the ballot box.
