Not a good look...

(Read Update at the bottom)

The Tele reports:

TONY Abbott missed the key economic vote of the new Parliament - the $42 billion fiscal stimulus package - because he fell asleep after a night of drinking witnessed by MPs from both sides of Parliament.

Then again:

He had helped with bushfire recovery efforts on the Central Coast four nights earlier and had not caught up on sleep.

"I don't get a lot of sleep in Canberra. By the time you get to bed, it's usually after 11 and I usually get up at five or earlier,'' he said.

"If you start off the week tired, it's very hard to catch up.''

Staying up all night to complete the budget reply speech wouldn't have helped either.

But when you know how hard your opponents (including within your own party) are trying to slime you, you need to try harder not to give them satisfaction. A night on the turps with colleagues doesn't help.

Update: Wow. I need to stop following Twitter.

Someone in comments has very unkindly pointed out this incident took place two years ago (and clearly Abbott has cleaned up his act since).

I was referred to this article by a rapid number of retweets today of a comment linking to the above post. I thought it was news. Clearly they haven't forgotten about it. The rest of you are welcome to forget all about this post.

(Memo Antony Loewenstein: This is how you deal with screwing something up. Yes, I could have deleted this post and comments to it).