But I do know this. The brand new Liberal government decided to cut funding to community legal centres and the CLCs were set to take a massive hit - by up to 30 per cent. It would result in thousands of women turned away from centres every year. Cash gave a speech at the inaugural Our Watch awards, for reporting of domestic violence, in 2015 where she spoke about the media's responsibility to help stop family violence but refused to take responsibility for the funding cuts which would see a flood of women unable to get legal help.

I think I was the next to speak. Angrily I demanded the government stop the systematic dismantling of the centres and I said: "The government needs to take responsibility and start funding it appropriately or we are going to have more and more women dying and more children dying."

And the whole time I spoke, Michaelia Cash stood not three metres away, shaking her head the entire time, dismissing what I had to say. There were no cuts. It was a line also adopted by her colleague George Brandis. By the then failed treasurer, Joe Hockey. I remember the manners of one of Hockey's staffers absolutely deserting him when he told me that the cuts "were only in the minds of you people". The government finally restored the money earlier this year and were very pleased with themselves.

Cash was again doing the deniability tango in Senate estimates this week. Toughing it out. Denying and denying until denial was no longer plausible. The West Australian senator is a meticulous and organised politician. The idea that she did not know what her staffer knew – that she did not know of an AFP raid – is nearly impossible for me to believe.

She is also a hugely successful politician in a party which, it's not too much to argue, actively excludes women. The WA state Liberal branch does – in the circumstances – the job required to temper women for the heat of politics and when Brandis goes, Cash is bound to be the next attorney-general. That's a job only given to those who are good at both the machinery and the machinations of government.