Last night an old friend of my wife stayed overnight. They knew each other back when they were both doing PR in the music business.

The friend has been working in Canberra for some years now, for the Federal Government. (Even the Government needs PR!)

She remarked about the change from Liberal to Labour and how it has personally affected her. There was an internal announcement that the minister would be visiting the office so everyone should be on their toes. The staff was expecting the minister, as was the norm during the Howard years, to walk past all the offices and go into the senior bureaucrat's office for a meeting. Surprise, surprise. Julia Gillard went up to each person in the office, shook hands and introduced herself. And then told each person that if she wanted information on a specific topic that they should be prepared to be called directly to provide that information. Direct, personal, non-threatening and totally refreshing.

And more pointedly this comes after apparently a lengthy period during the Howard years, where there has been a growing level of needing to comply with a political imperative in order to ensure that annual bonuses were available to staffers - corruption of intent, if not provable, illegal behavior.

Apparently Penny Wong has done the same thing. As I would expect all other ministers. Strong work ethic, smart people working to generate a new sense of what is right in the legislative capital of Australia.

Now all we have to do is to kick out labour in New South Wales so that the state can recover from the same indigence that developed under the Liberals in Canberra.

All political parties are the same it seems. All run by people who get in power because they provide a shining light of honesty, truth and righteousness. But after a while the rot sets in and they fall in love with the free travel, the commonwealth cars, the gofers and the huge pension plans that come with the job.