Barnaby Joyce, former deputy prime minister and parliament's sultan of soap, is out spruiking his just-published memoir.
With Weatherboard & Iron, Joyce joins a crowded field of political memoirists.
It seems as though every politician (and, often, ghost writer) is getting on the bandwagon - frequently after an illustrious career, insufficiently recognised, finds itself on the scrap heap.
Wikipedia has published a list of Australian political memoirs. It contains 65 titles and is far from complete.
The list starts in 1917 with My Reminiscences by Australia's fourth prime minister George Reid but only takes off in the last three decades.
Bob Hawke liked to say he had Australia's most talented federal ministry.
Be that as it may, he certainly had the most literary minded. At least 11 members of his ministry wrote a memoir. And that's not counting Hawke himself, whose own effort sold about 75,000, a sales record until overtaken by John Howard's Lazarus Rising.
One of the 11 is Graham Richardson who started Whatever it Takes with the line: "No-one writes books about the Liberal Party." Not quite true but at the time not far off.
Former prime minister Bob Hawke (AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts) Source: AAP
That was published in 1994, as the Labor flood was starting. It's one of the few that would still be at all widely remembered now.
This is partly because Richo is still in the political commentary business and partly because he admitted (shock, horror!) lying when necessary.
Another with a relatively long life is Mark Latham's Diaries, a powerful mixture of the cruel and the perceptive. It's compulsory reading for anyone interested in the problems of the Labor Party.
Louise Adler of Melbourne University Press, which has published many memoirs, has said the process seems to involve "picking at scabs".
Former federal Australia Labor Party leader Mark Latham's book "The Latham Diaries" sits on the shelf of a Sydney bookstore (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft) Source: AP
"Revenge might well be a dish best served cold but politicians seem to have remarkably long and detailed memories for the failings of others, insults, slights and frustrations," Adler said in a Meanjin article.
Nor can fairness or accuracy be expected.
"The political memoir is unabashedly myopic, subjective and reflexively partisan," she said.
Some handle this with more grace than others.
Gareth Evans is gently sardonic toward himself and many others. Bob Carr mixes self-parody with acute observation. Both are Labor former foreign ministers.
In the end, of course, is the bottom line.
Senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Macquarie University Jane Messer said in The Conversation in 2015 that the memoir was likely to pay its way, at the least. Even slow ones mostly sold more than a few thousand copies.
So Joyce's book, especially as it's had far more publicity than the average memoir, should do OK.
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