Utegate: the smoking gun which backfired?
This had the ingredients of a uniquely Australian scandal. There was a 'ute' (a pickup truck), a 'mate' (in this case the prime minister's friend and neighbour, the car dealer John Grant) and a lot of savage name-calling in parliament (Question Time in Canberra can regularly be a watch-from-behind-the-sofa sort of affair).
The problem was that the at the heart of the 'scandal' has been found to be a fake - 'created by a person or persons other than the purported author of the e-mail,' according to the preliminary investigation conducted by the Australian Federal Police.
According to the version originally put forward by the opposition, the email showed that Mr Rudd's constituent - the car dealer John Grant - had been granted special attention from the government when he applied for a government loan to cope with the global credit crunch.
Not a bad return for the loan of a battered old ute.
The opposition leader, Malcolm Turnbull, thus claimed that the prime minister had abused his position, and misled parliament, and should resign as a result.
From Friday afternoon onwards, the controversy seemed to go from nought to 60 in a blur - unlike the aforementioned ute - and it always seemed that Mr Turnbull might have been a bit hasty in ramping up his rhetoric and calling for Kevin Rudd's resignation.
Now Mr Turnbull's judgment has been brought into question, since the email upon which he based his attack has turned out to be bogus.
So much, then, for the smoking gun. As far as the prime minister is concerned, there isn't even the whiff of cordite. Indeed, there isn't even a gun.
Last week was Malcolm Turnbull's best as opposition leader for the simple reason that his main potential rival, the former Treasurer Peter Costello, finally ended months of speculation and announced his retirement from politics.
Now Mr Turnbull is nursing self-inflicted wounds and facing further questions about his political judgment and his basic political skills. As noted in her recent Quarterly Essay on Malcolm Turnbull, the Liberal Party wears him like a borrowed suit that does not fit.
The opposition has now turned it guns on the Treasurer, Wayne Swann, another Queenslander who they claim gave preferential treatment to the Brisbane car dealer John Grant.
Mr Turnbull must hope that this time they are not firing blanks.
I'm 
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