Mark Latham has admitted he prefers Meatloaf to rap, so he obviously couldn’t quote Cypress Hill when he talked about marijuana use in the House on the Hill on JJJ yesterday. Still, he got people excited – including our resident naif, Stephen Mayne.

We live in a country where the Foreign Minister and former opposition leader, Alexander Downer – someone virtually the entire political class makes out to be some form of posh git with no idea of the real world – admitted a decade ago that he’d tried the evil weed. So does the Health Minister – although he pleaded the Clinton defence. What’s the big deal, people?

“A new chum in parliament, a journo, passed it down the line and I didn’t see any harm in joining in,” the diaries say. As happens at how many parties every week across the country?

And who was the dope fiend? Who cares? I’ve got stoned with three Gallery journos in the House. One wasn’t there when the Latham incident occurred. And the other two? Well, I remember some pretty good parties from around that time. But I don’t keep a diary.