Senator Mary Jo Fisher on life

And in spite of being not a "nerd", does Fisher use research much herself? The Senator says she used to have a broadband connection at home, nevertheless that these days she tended to rely on her BlackBerry only - adding with a touch of humour that during much of the IT jargon around was on the whole hard to understand sometimes, it wasn't worth worrying about it.

"It doesn't concern me that I don't know so much, when our Shadow [Turnbull] knows so much about IT and the modern world of communication," she says. "People like me are a good balance for him."