As a political chess move, it was as brazen as it was brilliant.
Andrew Barr's cunning plot to knock popular Liberal Brendan Smyth out of the 2016 election race, and straight into a plum, freshly created government position, told you everything you needed to know about how desperately the Labor leader wanted another term in office.
Mr Barr is, let's not forget, a political animal.
The Labor leader shamelessly defended the appointment at the time, insisting Mr Smyth was eminently qualified to travel the world spruiking Canberra as the territory's first Commissioner for International Engagement.
He defended himself again when auditor-general Maxine Cooper described the appointment process as lacking in transparency.
Then-Liberal leader Jeremy Hanson reacted with dignity to the defection of one of his strongest assets just three months out from a winnable election, saying that he was "delighted that Brendan has taken this position and I mean that absolutely genuinely".
His reaction stands in stark contrast to how Mr Barr responded when the shoe found itself on the other foot this week after former Labor chief minister Jon Stanhope accepted Alistair Coe's offer to spearhead his proposed poverty taskforce.
Mr Barr dismissed the appointment as a stunt, said Mr Stanhope's standing in the Labor movement had been diminished and said he "couldn't give a rat's arse" if it meant the ACT's longest serving chief minister was stripped of his life membership of party.
The circumstances are, clearly, not directly comparable.
Mr Stanhope, unlike Mr Smyth in 2016, has not been picked for a position as a means of eliminating a political rival. Whereas Mr Smyth was appointed to immediately fill a $300,000-a-year job, Mr Stanhope has only agreed to take up a role that will only exist if the Liberals win the election.
As a Liberal in the ACT Legislative Assembly for 18 years, Mr Smyth was as a matter of course routinely critical of Labor and Mr Barr. But his attacks didn't carry the same venom as those launched by Mr Stanhope on the party he once loved and led.
There are nevertheless enough parallels to be drawn between the two scenarios to expose Mr Barr to accusations of hypocrisy.
In Mr Barr's world, it seems OK for him to play politics with political appointments, but not Alistair Coe?
Of course, Mr Barr isn't the only political animal in this town. It was Jon Stanhope's Labor government which appointed popular Liberal Bill Stefaniak to the ACT Civil Administrative Tribunal just two months out from the 2008 election. In 1996, Liberal chief minister Kate Carnell appointed Labor's Terry Connolly to the Supreme Court.
Canberra might be a transient place, but it has a population full of smart people with long memories.
Many won't have forgotten Mr Barr's cynical plot to poach Brendan Smyth four years ago.
They are unlikely to forget the hypocrisy of his latest rebuke of Mr Stanhope either.
