I remembered I needed to read the book at about the time Tony Abbott told radio talk host Ray Hadley the best kind of energy policy was one that manufactured a partisan point of difference with Labor—and when a bunch of conservative politicians were out telling the voters not to trust politicians during the postal survey on same sex marriage.

The book had come to me a few weeks earlier. A political friend had wandered past my desk and presented me with a paperback called The End of Politicians: Time for a Real Democracy. ‘I thought you might be interested in this,’ he said, with a chuckle. I was, of course, interested. But at that moment I was in the grip of another parliamentary sitting fortnight and the 24/7 intensity we now manage in shrinking newsrooms up and down the parliamentary press gallery—the daily ‘much ado about not very much’.