A rabbi, a Catholic priest and an Anglican minister all gathered for afternoon tea. No, it’s not the start of a bad taste joke: it is the mid-point for what has been for me a most memorable and exciting week in parliament and in my Melbourne electorate of Kooyong. Attending the ecumenical service at the Carmelite Monastery in Kooyong is a not-to-be-missed annual event on the Kew Festival calendar. While many of those assembled for the moving church service claimed to be there for prayer or repentance, the truth is somewhat different. Mother Superior and her fellow sisters are so renowned in the district for their passionfruit sponge and coconut-laced lamingtons that even the most unholy of atheists turn up in their droves.

Talking of gods, there is one football coach who many Australians believe is supernatural. He is the former Saint, Tiger, Bulldog, Eagle and Magpie supremo Mick Malthouse, who has now set up shop at Carlton. Together with my parliamentary colleagues Tony Smith, Rob Mitchell and Andrew Giles, I hosted a little shindig for Carlton supporters in Canberra during the week. It was a social affair that showed that jousting politicians may not find common cause over the budget or boats, but when it comes to something far more important and tribal, like our shared love of the Navy Blues, it’s as if we are blood brothers.

Indeed, the lure of listening to the philosopher-king, Mick Malthouse, is so great — don’t forget he has written autobiographical tomes with such unforgettable titles as The Ox Is Slow But the Earth Is Patient —that even ABC anchor and Carlton fan Virginia Trioli found time to drop in. ABC Vespa-riding star Emma Alberici, also a Blues supporter, couldn’t make it as she was busy charming my colleagues at an ABC love-in in the Great Hall of the People. Another notable loiterer at the back of the pack was the second most famous graduate from Nambour High, the member for Lilley, Wayne Swan. The school’s most famous graduate, Kevin Rudd, was however nowhere to be seen as he was apparently instructing Ban Ki-moon on how to pacify the Russians.

Football, lamingtons and the battles in Crimea are all well and good but unfortunately for this modest member they don’t pay the bills. The real business of the week was in the federal parliament as we prepared the ground for Repeal Day, a historic moment in Australian politics. For the first time a full day in the House of Representatives was dedicated to repealing unnecessary red and green tape. The Prime Minister called it a ‘bonfire of regulations’ but it could have just as easily been called a bonfire of Labor’s ‘inanities, profanities and insanities’. A failed legacy of the Rudd and Gillard government was 21,000 additional regulations, boasting as they did of how much legislation they passed in partnership with the Greens. The inverse relationship between the quantity of Labor’s legislative tonnage and the quality of its content could never have been more pronounced. Not to mention the swathes of forests cut down to cater for the Green and Labor legislative feast.

It must be said that the week in parliament did not go all the government’s way. While the introduction of the Repeal Day was a great success, one of its original architects was fighting a battle on another front. An incredibly decent, competent and valued colleague and friend was being hung, drawn and quartered by the Canberra press gallery. Never mind that no one has put forward any evidence of wrong doing on Arthur Sinodinos’s part, the fact that he was being talked about in the same sentence as the infamous Obeids was for many people enough. The senator will have his chance to put the record straight and we look forward to the time when he resumes his position on the front bench.

The big loser out of this episode is likely to be the Australian Labor party. In applying the blowtorch to Sinodinos, they have set the bar so high that come the time when the inquiry into union corruption kicks into gear, there may be more than a few Labor members who are looking to hide. The prison term meted out to Craig Thomson during the week confirms just how serious the courts will treat unacceptable behaviour by unionists.

The mystery of some of the missing HSU funds may have been solved with the credit card receipts of Craig Thomson, but the other mystery of the week, the disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, has been harder to crack. Policy debates in the House were more than once interrupted with updates from the Prime Minister on the search for the plane. This is a real human tragedy which has brought disparate nations together in an international search and rescue effort.

At the end of a very long week that took me everywhere from the North Balwyn Bowls Club to the despatch box in the House of Representatives, with plenty of interviews and speeches in between, it was with a smile on my face that I opened the newspaper this morning. The headline screamed ‘Good Knight to a Dame’. After warmly farewelling Governor General Quentin Bryce, The Prime Minister, in an announcement that surprised many, welcomed her as Australia’s newest dame. This most civil of recognitions is more than a link to the past, it is a sign of our gratitude to those pre-eminent and select Australians who have selflessly helped shape our future.