Here’s hoping Julie Bishop has the same capacity for self-parody, harmless indiscretion and canny observation as Bob Carr, and assiduously keeps a diary of her time as foreign minister, to be published within months of her leaving the portfolio.

Aside from revealing her own exercise secrets, sleeping patterns, dietary quirks and views on business class travel, the diary might shed light on one of the more audacious, high-risk and sensitive diplomatic undertakings since Gareth Evans embarked on the Cambodian peace process in 1989.

Just imagine her account of her meeting with Cambodian counterpart Hor Namhong on a humid Saturday morning in Phnom Penh in February. How did she broach the idea of one of the world’s poorest and most corrupt countries resettling refugees who will have spent years on Nauru as part of Tony Abbott’s plan to stop the boats?

How did Mr Namhong react? At what point in the conversation did the minister suggest that her government would show its appreciation by increasing Australian aid to Cambodia, while pruning it in other areas? And how did she traverse the touchy subject of Cambodia's human rights abuses, like the murder of five striking garment workers the previous month in Phnom Penh?

Maybe she pitched it the way Scott Morrison did, fleetingly, last week on the ABC’s 7.30 program, and cast Australia as the model global citizen, keen to expand the number of countries that participate in the resettlement of refugees from the current 26. After all, in Morrison’s phrase, “resettlement is freedom from persecution; it’s not a ticket to a first-class economy”.