Watching the criticism that led him to take a leave of absence, I found myself wondering what was part of the negotiation. Would the public be getting a less candid interview if the price for access had been $50,000? Would we get more if it was $200,000? (These are Australian dollar amounts, in case you’re wondering.)

• The Lucrative Revolving Door

What about the other ways that journalists and government cozy up to each other?

The Australian scolded Laura Tingle of the ABC for accepting $15,000 for moderating a panel at a government summit meeting in March — only to have The Australian Financial Review call out Greg Sheridan, The Australian’s foreign editor, for holding a paid position with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Australia-Indonesia Council.

Neither seemed to be punished by their audiences or their bosses.

Maybe that’s just a function of a partisan media culture, where many politics reporters and editors have also acted as political advisers, or gone back and forth between both worlds. The revolving door is not unique to Australia — George Stephanopoulos worked in the Clinton White House before joining ABC News — but it’s definitely common and accepted here.

The Monthly’s former politics editor, Sean Kelly, for example, was an adviser to Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, as his online biography makes clear. Osman Faruqi, now of the ABC, is a former Greens party staffer.

John Garnaut’s case is also interesting.

A former China correspondent and Asia Pacific editor for Fairfax, he wrote often as a journalist about China’s efforts to influence Australian politics. Then he became an adviser to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull while never quite giving up journalism, having written recently about China for Foreign Affairs.

There’s value, of course, in subject-specific expertise, but when there are so many blurred lines between government and journalism, it can be hard to figure out whether what we’re learning from what we read or watch includes all the relevant details, or just those that serve a particular argument, political party or paying client.