LABOR front bencher Joy Burch has been caught naked – well, naked without a script.

In the first Question Time since the Liberal Party’s $10,000 volunteer grant controversy, Minister for Community Services Burch was asked a series of Dorothy Dixers by her own party, on the role of Volunteering ACT and their grants process.

However, when Liberal frontbencher Jeremy Hanson asked the simplest of questions: “Is it morally appropriate for political parties to receive hundreds and thousands of dollars from the proceeds of gambling? It can be answered with a simple yes or no”.

Ms Burch relied heavily on answering questions using reading from pre-prepared notes. This time, caught without her usual script of papers, she couldn’t coherently answer it. Burch’s longing looks to fellow frontbenchers provided no answers and instead she started to answer an entirely different question.

“Ms Burch is trying to answer a question I didn’t ask,” Hanson said as a point or order. “She’s trying to pretend that I’ve asked the question regarding money paid to grants to Canberra Labor Club. Let me ask my question again.”

Even when Speaker Shane Rattenbury gave Ms Burch the hurry-up with a firm: “Let’s go, Ms Burch,” and being asked the same question for the third time by Hanson, she decided to answer the question, with her own question.

“The question here is that, those opposite, have secured $10,000 out of the pocket of well-deserving community organisations,” she said.

Well, no, Ms Burch, that wasn’t the question. Nor the answer.