Some decades ago in Canberra, your column writer toiled in what was then termed the Ministerial Correspondence Unit, a team of three people (OK, two and a half, since our third member was so busy reading the Public Service Gazette and responding to vacancies she was hardly ever present).

The MCU was the Department’s answer to the mail bags of letters (email was then in its infancy) received by the minister’s office: all correspondence that was not to do with policy matters – letters dealing with electorate matters were flicked back to the minister – were dealt with in the unit,...