It’s an account of his 18 months in the job and includes such earth-shattering peculiarities as a lack of pyjamas and poor food in business class air travel and an airline’s seat design that “owes a lot to the trans-Atlantic slave trade’’.

But Bob, old mate, you haven’t been the only one involved in government to wile away the day recording waffle in a diary.

 As a former press officer for the deputy president of the Senate for several years, here’s a brief selection of some earth-shattering observations of my own, kept for no apparent reason other than some sort of reminder of time spent working in Parliament House.

Tuesday: The cleaner says the plastic bags they use are 50 years old and “soon we’ll have to buy them ourselves...” The clip, clop, clip, clop of high heels up and down the corridor outside the office is endless. David from the Black Rod’s office next door says women are ruling the country.

Wednesday: Most MPs’ staff, both men and women, wear black. Black suits, black shoes, black shirts and black overcoats. They look like magpies. Had a haircut at Lizzies. She tells me her life story and has seen lots of heads in 22 years she’s been in Parliament House. Her favourite client was Fred Daly who always offered to pay her a search fee for finding his hair.

Thursday: Lots of chook feeding out the front this morning. The pie cart out of sausage rolls for lunch. Went to Aussies cafeteria and lined up with the likes of Peter Costello and Kim Beazley. No favouritism here, mate. Just $4.80 for a ham roll.

Tuesday: Clip, clop, clip clop. Nothing changes. Laurie Oakes goes past. He seems to be getting bigger. Puffing more. Bob Brown is hogging the Senate again. A division causes a rush in the corridor. The Black Rod knocks back one of my newsletter stories because it was “too political ...” What?

Wednesday: Went to Senate inquiry into New Zealand apples. It was waste of time. It’s hot today. Z cars out the front have engines running for air conditioning. Pie cart sold out of sausage rolls again. Bugger. Finished at 6pm and went swimming in the PH pool. Pollies don’t want for anything...

Thursday: There’s a commotion in the corridor. Strike me pink, it’s Effie. What’s she doing here? She says “hello, good thanks” as she walks past.

And for budget night: Haircut at Lizzies. She says doesn’t seem like budget day. No excitement any more. No hype. Probably because of all the leaks. We get new phones but I can’t work mine. We’ve ordered pizzas for tonight in the office. Party mode. There’s the bells. I get my budget copy now and start looking for country stories.

And so it goes. It wouldn’t be a best-seller like Bob Carr’s diary probably will but at least it’s a fair dinkum description of everyday life in the heart of Australia’s democratic system.

Well, sort of.

THE ducks from Cook Park are on the walkabout again, especially in Kite and Sampson streets where they’ve been waddling around each morning.

Spreading their wings further, so to speak, the other morning five or six of them waddled across the Summer Street-Hill Street roundabout, getting much closer to the central business district in their travels.

Cars have been going in all directions to avoid them but it didn’t seem to faze the ducks even though they were unintentionally playing chicken (oh, dear) with the drivers.

They’re easy targets for hoons who would probably think it funny to bowl a couple over.

It wouldn’t hurt to put up a few signs warning drivers because the ducks don’t seem to realise the danger they’re in on the road.

AN old farmer is inconsolable after his dog goes missing. His wife suggests he put an advertisement in the newspaper, which he does.

But two weeks later there’s still no sign of the mutt.

“What did you write in the ad?” his wife asks.

“Here, boy,” he says.

HOPEFULLY Orange’s gopher owners won’t read this.

A Pom has modified one that can do 132km/h and it’s been recorded in the Guinness Book of Records as the fastest mobility scooter in the world.

But can you imagine the chaos in the shopping centre if Orange gopher owners did some high-performance mods to their machines to boost horsepower?

Some of them already believe they’re Formula One drivers as they tear along the footpath in Summer Street, zig-zagging in and out of pedestrians, and dodging shoppers in supermarkets.

And there’s been a few cases of people falling off while heading home from the pub.

 So, heaven forbid. With some fine-tuning of their gophers we’d all be in danger of becoming accident victims.

READER Barry Smart says we need something to combat the road litter problem and asks whatever happened to those small reusable car littler bags.

The bags were issued by the state government through petrol stations and were handy for storing small bits of rubbish rather than shotting it out the window.

Barry says perhaps a slightly bigger bag to hold things like empty drink cans and takeaway food packaging would be ideal but at what cost for supply and distribution and by whom.

He says it’s something to think about.