An operation has transformed the way I hear English,  just in time for Christmas. So many phrases so right for this time of year now sound so different. So literal, in fact. ‘It does my heart good.’ ‘A heart-felt welcome.’ ‘Love you with all my heart.’ And especially, ‘You touch my heart’, because it’s only a couple of months ago that someone really did, and with a cut there and a stitch here made sure I’d see next Christmas, too. Talk about grabbing life with fresh heart.

Damn. I thought I’d protected my Christmases forever by inventing a new tradition years ago. Hold two of them! One on Christmas Eve, with presents, turkey and the Salzburger Nockerl dessert that’s another family tradition, ever since we saw it towering on someone’s plate near Mozart’s old home. The other, on Christmas Day. Then there’d always be at least one Christmas dinner for the tight ‘us’, to guard against the time when children might be dragged off to in-laws or wherever. Well, this year a big fail. A daughter in Yorkshire, a son in Sydney and another son we’re hoping can make it down south from his first passion job, way out in the remotest red-dust Outback. Still, how thrilled I am, having grown up in then ultra-distant Darwin and the Nullarbor, to have one child see the splendour of remote Australia for themselves.

Siobhan McKenna, friend and boss, has left the building. Well, I say she’s been my boss although I’ve always been foggy about her title. She was usually just whispered of as Lachlan Murdoch’s right hand.  Anyway, I’m off to a farewell party for her in Sydney, and thought I’d bring a present. We share a love of books, so that’s a safe choice, since it’s always the fault of the receiver if they don’t like a truly great book. So I’ve chosen two end-of-empire novels for a woman at an end-of-empire moment – not, I hasten to add, that I expect News Corp to now go the way of the Raj. One is The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa, about the destruction of Sicily’s nobility by beady-eyed levellers of the new democracy. I’ve probably raved about this before. But the other is The Transylvanian Trilogy, an obscure elegy by another nobleman, Count Miklos Banffy, a former Hungarian foreign minister, that’s been haunting me since I read it during my recuperation. That’s not because it has anything to do with vampires. No, it’s the parallels with Australia, especially under this government.

The empire that’s ending in this novel is the Austro-Hungarian one, killed off by the first world war. But Banffy’s real grief is for the Hungarian part of it, especially his homeland of Transylvania, now in Romania. I know the word Transylvania is today a joke, but the counts in Banffy’s world aren’t bloodsuckers, even if some  Romanian peasants of these Hungarian nobles might have begged to differ. No, Banffy’s fellow counts and parliamentarians had a taste for booze, horses and tennis, and – what drove Banffy crazy – an utter blindness to growing threats outside their borders. Sounding familiar? Indeed, within Banffy’s lifetime, Hungary was to go to war and lose two-thirds of its territory, while Banffy himself lost his homeland and family castle, plus the heirlooms in it, looted and burned by Nazis furious that he’d tried to get Hungary to abandon Germany. Then, of course, came the communists, promising comfort for all.  And look at us now, a complacent welfare state with a military lacking weapons and men, under a government obsessing instead on a quixotic net zero crusade – seemingly indifferent to dangers over our horizon – Russia confronting an irresolute West in Ukraine, as its Chinese ally threatens war over Taiwan.

It was love of a good book that struck me when I was first introduced to  Lachlan Murdoch by his father. I mentioned one, and was alarmed, then flattered, when Lachlan whipped out paper and pen to jot down the title. Alarmed, because I’d probably been showing off. I recalled this while packing to fly up to Lachlan’s annual Christmas party, and asked my wife if I should bring a present – a book! – since I might seem ungracious to arrive empty-handed, yet a nuisance to litter with unwanted gifts the fine home of a man with all he could wish to buy. ‘Does he even have time to read?’ my wife wondered sadly.

It’s humbling to end the year with such power. The Prime Minister and his no-Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, declare ‘Sky After Dark’ has the Liberals under its thumb.  Then former Liberal prime minister Malevolent Turnbull now snarls that the Liberals who inexplicably sacked him after a mere 39 losing Newspolls in a row have been ruined by heeding Sky After Dark’s baleful agenda. Just a handful of us must exert this awesome control, since neither Sharri nor Paul Murray would consider themselves conservatives, red in tooth and claw. But just between you, me and the editor of this magazine, a fellow SAD puppet master, I confess Turnbull is hallucinating. I’ll gladly take tiny credit for urging the Liberals to say no the Voice, to great success. But I was a complete failure in the last election campaign. Even before the Liberals got flogged, I wrote that its campaign had ‘collapsed’ and fumed at its lack of a defence policy, its timidity in arguing for nuclear power, its inexplicably un-Liberal promise of higher taxes than Labor, and its refusal to attack net zero. If the Liberals were listening to me, I never noticed. If some listen now,  is that remarkable? Which other media outlets pursue the interests and concerns of conservatives? To complain about a few conservative presenters on one subscription channel is an indictment of the lack of diversity in the rest of the media. So when it comes to our little station, I urge our haters to have a heart.  Oops.