My first federal election campaign was in 1996. I’d been a journalist for two whole weeks when Paul Keating called the election he would lose to John Howard. I was entirely clueless. No responsible editor could put me on the bus where reporters are positioned to cover the leaders—at least not in those days, because in those days only senior people went out on the campaign trail. My bureau chief, a benevolent soul, hid me in plain sight, deploying me to Tasmania on a contained field trip to interview Bob Brown, who was running for the Senate. Not even the new kid could screw up that assignment, but I managed to, somehow. A colleague had to help me beat the piece into shape to get it published. It was a less than auspicious start but fundamentally I’m implacable and relentless, and was fixated on the notion that political journalism was my vocation. I vowed there would be more campaigns, and I would learn from every single one of them.

Election campaigns are signposts in my life. By 1998 I was off the training wheels and deployed on the campaign bus. I could be let out in public on the main story and not bring shame on my masthead. But my body was in revolt. While John Howard almost lost that poll trying to sell the GST, I doubled over during campaign stops, vomiting profusely, swelling with my first child.