Tony Abbott may have lost the prime ministership, but he'll never, it seems, lose his fondness for a spot of shirt-fronting.
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Who better than an audience of Australian-Ukrainians to hear this glad news?
Mr Abbott, who has seemed less than entirely thrilled in recent weeks to have had the burden of prime ministership removed from his shoulders, was clearly delighted on Tuesday to be invested in Melbourne with the inaugural Freedom Award by the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations.
This was, of course, not a celebration of his freedom from the onus of high office.
It was in recognition of his efforts in support of Ukraine's sovereignty during the dark days last year after 38 Australians were among 283 passengers killed when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down near the Ukraine-Russian border.
Mr Abbott accused Russia-backed rebels of firing the missile that brought down the plane, and within weeks told Parliament that Russia was deliberately and openly violating Ukrainian sovereignty by moving troops and military equipment into Ukraine.
He increased sanctions against Russia and even toyed with the idea of sending Australian troops to Ukraine to guard those trying to locate and repatriate the remains of the victims of the plane crash.
Yes, and soon he was threatening to physically muscle up to Russia's President Vladimir Putin when he came to Australia for the G20 summit in Brisbane - a promised cage fight that, disappointingly, didn't eventuate.
"I'm going to shirt-front Mr Putin," he said at the time, exciting headline writers around the world.
This seemed to some of the more diplomatically cautious among Mr Abbott's colleagues and detractors as a touch too heroic, and there was speculation that he'd got the wrong description of what he'd planned to do: surely he'd meant he wanted to "button-hole" Mr Putin, or somesuch.
Not at all.
Accepting his award on Tuesday, Mr Abbott declared it had been "an extraordinary honour to lead this country for two years and to do what I could for Australia and the wider world".
"In particular," he said, it had been an honour "to assert the universal decency of mankind against their violators, whether that be a terrorist caliphate or a Russian President that needed shirt-fronting."
"Did he really say that?" inquired a reporter down the back as Mr Abbott's remark was consumed in a hubbub of applause from the Ukrainian-Australian audience..
Yes he did.
President Putin, currently accusing Turkey of terrorist behaviour for shooting down a Russian fighter jet, may not have noticed.