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brief. Moira’s gone down with the flu and Jim feels we should show the flag.’
    â€˜It’ll mean missing a day in parliament,’ I said. ‘And you know how much I enjoy sitting on the backbench with my thumb up my quoit. So what’s the pay-off ?’
    â€˜A chance to observe the democratic process,’ said Della. ‘And a free seafood lunch in beautiful San Remo.’
    â€˜I don’t know anything about coastal management.’
    â€˜What’s to know? The tide comes in, the tide goes out. Session starts at eleven, finishes at four. I’ll send over the agenda papers, okay?’
    â€˜Might as well,’ I said. ‘And thanks, Del.’
    â€˜For what?’
    â€˜As if you don’t know.’
    San Remo was a hundred kilometres away. Good old Della had cooked up a reason to send me somewhere beyond the reach of journalists. Somewhere I wouldn’t get my nose rubbed in it.
    I was touched by the gesture. It reminded me that the Labor Party was a kind of family. Dysfunctional, certainly, but one to which I had belonged, man and boy, for almost thirty years.
    I spent the next forty-five minutes drafting a speech opposing a forthcoming amendment to the Government Audit Act, a measure requiring that the Auditor-General carry out his duties with a bucket over his head. You do what you can. By the time I’d roughed up an outline, other MPs and staffers had begun to arrive for the day.
    I found a half-dozen of them in the lunchroom, clustered around the coffee plunger, chewing the fat. The Honourable Kaye Clegg, Member for Melbourne West, had just returned from Sydney. She was talking about an event that happened there a year earlier, the murder of a Labor MP as he arrived home after a party branch meeting. The case was still unsolved.
    â€˜Word is, it was a professional hit by Vietnamese heavies,’ she said, dunking a shortbread.
    â€˜At least somebody thought he was important enough to kill,’ said Dennis ‘Ivor’ Biggun, the Member for Ballarat. ‘Here in Victoria a Labor MP can’t even get run over. People cross the street when they see us coming. What do you reckon, Murray?’
    â€˜I’m thinking of having a whip-around, see if I can raise enough for a contract on you-know-who.’ I cocked my head in the direction of the Premier’s office.
    Ivor tossed a coin onto the table. ‘Count me in.’
    â€˜Pay to have him whacked? I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction,’ said our deputy spokesperson on health.
    Most of the others dredged change from purses and pockets, adding it to Ivor’s ten cents. The total came to ninety-five cents.
    â€˜That’s this party’s problem in a nutshell,’ sighed Kaye Clegg.
    We drifted in a group to Parliament House for the weekly caucus meeting. A new leader had recently been installed, a thin-lipped automaton with television hair and the voter appeal of diphtheria. He gave us a half-hour lecture on the need to shake off our image as big spenders. I sat at the back and rested my eyes.
    When I got back to the Henhouse, the agenda papers for the coastal management whatsit had arrived. I tossed them into my briefcase and rang my constituency office in Melbourne Upper. It had just gone nine-thirty, opening time. Ayisha, my eyeball on the ground, answered the phone.
    â€˜That cop, Detective Sergeant Meakes,’ she reported. ‘He rang a few minutes ago. Said to tell you that the coroner’s findings’ll be handed down mid-afternoon and the police media unit will issue a statement immediately afterwards. Said if you’ve got any questions, don’t hesitate to call him.’
    â€˜Very thoughtful,’ I said. ‘Considering what the cops think about my questions. Anything else?’
    â€˜Three media calls, so far. “Today Tonight”, the Herald Sun and ABC radio. You going to talk to them?’
    â€˜Think I should?’
    â€˜It