An appy way to learn about our great leaders

THIS week, an enterprising young wag created the Paul Keating Insult Generator iPhone app, which turns the long, long list of Australia's snarkiest prime minister's greatest verbal hits and insults into some brand new lexically gifted and diamond-sharp zingers.

Like some kind of thesaurus-endowed and especially bad-tempered Santa, the app is the perfect companion for Christmas parties with frenemies and frustrating relatives alike, but I prefer to imagine how some of the insults could be best distributed like lumps of coal to some of our current political members.

"You pre-Copernican obscurantist, you're the resident nutter" - one lump of coal for Barnaby Joyce. "You small-time punk, you're a dead carcass swinging in the wind" - Craig Thomson, this is your life. And my favourite: "You imbecilic caucus of political harlots" somehow suits the whole damn bunch of federal and state politicians put together.

While fighting politicians in countries like Taiwan and South Korea have a lock on making World Wrestling Entertainment look like the mincing fakery of a high school Shakespearean sword fight, Australia's politicians remain largely tame when allowed to sit in the big house.

This is, of course, aside from Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne, who earlier this year tried to run out of Parliament to avoid a vote like two little boys caught with their fingers in the pie - ironically, the vote itself being about Craig Thomson, a man alleged to actually have fingered some pies himself, but not in the same way as Bill Shorten, of course.

But beyond the good behaviour of Parliament House, some of our prime ministers have been involved in some pretty fascinating life choices and events. While the centenary of Federation sought to ask whether Australians even knew who our first prime minister was with advertisements, apps like the Paul Keating Insult Generator seem a far better way to teach people about the amazing people who have led our nation.

While the fact of his first prime ministership is by far the most impressive fact about Edmund Barton, it's probably his pre-political career that holds more interest for modern Australians.

Barton was employed as a first-class cricket umpire until he was 30, when he presided as an umpire over a match between New South Wales and England's touring side of the time.

This match was in fact the scene of international cricket's very first riot, after the other umpire on duty gave an out which the impassioned (and reportedly heavily invested via prolific gambling) crowd disagreed with. While a cricketing riot in 1879 evokes images of nothing more ghastly than splashed tea stains on white pants, it was actually reported as "an international incident" and Barton himself is credited with keeping the violence from the pitch invaders - who included in their numbers one Banjo Paterson, incidentally - in relative check.

While an app that sees Edmund Barton working crowd control at the MCG on Boxing Day doesn't sound exactly fascinating, I wouldn't mind seeing how Barton would line up against ex-Labor leader Mark "Biffo" Latham.

Perhaps in a subsequent round of PM vs PM the winner could do a J. Edgar Hoover-esque outfit change and go head-to-head with university election loser and pugilist Tony Abbott, with the app allowing users to guess how the alleged walls around his alleged head will fare.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, being Australia's second-shortest-term prime minister is almost as unimpressive as the film Prometheus, but the man with the title had more skills than MacGyver.

Earle Page, Australia's 11th prime minister, served for only 20 days, but worked as a farmer and a pioneer surgeon, as well as enlisting for World War II. History books recall him as the "father of health insurance", his knowledge of medicine and politics a perfect combination to do in early 1950s Australia what Barack Obama has only just managed to do for America in 2012.

Best of all, Page performed successful experimental surgery in his lounge room. Why not, right? In terms of apps, Earle Page is essentially the father of the game Operation! long before the exciting game of tweezers and buzzers even existed.

An adaptation as such may be the fastest way for Milton Bradley to get into the Australian primary school curriculum yet.

The best thing about this newfound interest in the history of Australian politicians and their mad, strange lives beyond the title is that an app is the perfect expression of Australian history and spirit.

While Americans have a 2½ hour epic Steven Spielberg film about Abraham Lincoln, we have something interactive, clever and silly which celebrates the down-to-earth yet wicked humour of one of our favourite leaders.

Something fun made with Keating-esque inventiveness, wit and a little bit of cheek - and what could be more perfectly Australian than that?

Courtney Hocking is a Melbourne-based writer and comedian.