There aren't many giants in the world of political reporting, but Alan Ramsey is consistently cruel, abrasive, and spot-on. Alan has always been the classiest of class acts, deftly mixing wit and the proper amount of indignation. Along with my former boss Dr Cope, no one has covered the myth and reality of parliamentary bureaucracy better, and very few are apt to.

Legislature A very expensive business

Ninety-three years ago, Queensland's Andrew Fisher, our fifth prime minister and Labor's second, decided it was absurd that five departments answering to five senior bureaucrats, each with his own little empire, should run the new Australian Parliament, which at the time met in Melbourne. Fisher said so but nothing changed. Ninety-one years on and the five departments are still there, still run as autonomous empires, despite an estimated 20 attempts at scaling down over the years since Fisher's first abortive attempt, though now only four senior bureaucrats are in charge, not five. Two of these are the heads of the Department of the Senate and the Department of the House of Representatives. Each is a bloke, with unrenewable 10-year contracts, and each is paid $188,000 a year.
· Parliamentary Empires [SMH ]