Although Australia basically shuts down for a month, not everyone in Canberra is on leave during the holiday period. Our mole in DFAT had time to catch up on paperwork and just “happened” upon a despatch from New York, which was not as explosive as some, but did concern Alexander Downer — and was on a restricted list.

According to the despatch, the former Minister for Foreign Affairs was active in the dying days of the Howard regime in securing for himself a tax-free sinecure from the UN.

I haven’t seen the actual despatch but Mole has never let me down in the past. According to Mole, the scenario went as follows:

After Alexander made the rounds of the UN waving his CV in front of many influential people, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon scraped the bottom of the UN appointments barrel and couldn’t find anything down there for Downer.

But all was not lost as one of the UN’s under-secretaries (there are four such people) had an inspired moment and trotted off to see his boss.

The under-secretary reminded his boss of a recent conversation they had both had lamenting that the chances of settling the long-time and often violent crisis in Cyprus were zero.

Why not, said one man to the other, offer the veteran Australian foreign minister the impossible task and thereby get him, and this is a direct quote, “out of our hair”?

His Lordship was courted, Rudd (smilingly) agreed — it wasn’t against any of his Government’s policy — and Downer jetted over to the Big Apple to sign the contract.

Of course he wasn’t made privy to the UN’s belief the troubles were nigh impossible to control and so far the results of his efforts are unknown, but it might be just as well to watch this space.