This subject of the carriage of fruit on trains was a vexing one that came up with surprising regularity (or perhaps it was not surprising when one considered that the members of the Assembly who raised the issue invariably turned out to hold a substantial financial stake in the particular railway concerned or in the fruit industry or both). That such shameless partisanship and self-interest should rule parliament no longer struck Alasdair as odd. He had become inured. He had come to suspect that the Board of Health’s report on infectious diseases (which recommended the creation of a weekly updated map identifying street by street and house by house the sites of such infections) was simply a method by which the members and their wives might know which places in the city to avoid on the weekends as they made their way to the theatres and recital halls.

Such was the business of the Office of Public Monies. And yet it was vital, if not the work itself, then the ownership of the office, for if one aspired to be elected to the new federal parliament, one needed to be a minister in the Legislative Assembly. And so Alasdair made speeches in the chamber, he drew up reports, he attended committees.

And today he met with the Premier.

A knot of determined pressmen greeted Alasdair at the steps of Parliament House and he ran through in his head one or two pithy statements he had prepared on the short walk over.

‘What does the Premier have to say on the outrage last night?’ one man demanded, pushing to the front of the little crowd.

‘Is Mr Reid alarmed by the rise in violent protests?’ cried another, and it became clear it was the Premier and Mr Barton that interested them. A minor minister—and they did not get more minor than the Secretary for Public Monies—did not.

But the Premier was not here, was he? And the minister was. Alasdair held up his hand for quiet:

‘Gentlemen.’

He held them then, just for a moment. Just long enough to allow a silence to fall, the jostling to cease. Respect to be established. He lifted his head so that the men at the rear might catch his words. ‘I am about to meet with the Premier and I can assure you neither he, nor indeed any member of his ministry, will be cowed by these childish and uncoordinated acts of disorder and lawlessness. The vital work of the Federation—’

‘But surely last night’s attack was coordinated.’

‘Bloke went to the trouble of disguising himself as a waiter.’

The days when a gentleman, when a minister of the Crown, might speak uninterrupted and unimpeded were, apparently, gone. Alasdair held up his hand once more. He raised his voice:

‘Gentlemen, if you care to recall the Premier’s own words at Tamworth on Wednesday, as reported in your own newspapers—’