Author’s note: What follows is not necessarily an accurate historical record, although any resemblance to real persons (or animals), living or dead, is entirely intentional.

The member for Enfield arrives home late. He wearily juggles his keys in the front door, laden with briefcase, overcoat and a large bundle of papers – a few more friendly suggestions for legislative reform from the Police Commissioner. His faithful yet aloof cat, Cat, sits quietly at the far end of the hall, peering at his housemate with lofty disdain.

Their eyes meet briefly; Cat yawns and glances away.

“You had me at Hello, Cat,” mutters John Rau sardonically.

The cat shrugs itself off the carpet and glides away; its owner, it senses, has had a tough day (the standard, these days) and may seek to vent his spleen by sounding off at length about his various political frustrations.

Left suddenly without a captive interlocutor, the Attorney-General instead busies himself microwaving a Healthy Choice meal for one. He dumps himself in front of the telly and rifles through his DVD collection. Beneath his well-worn copy of Jerry Maguire and his Rumpole of the Bailey box-set is a plain brown cover containing the only legal South Australian copy of the horror-porn-art flick A Serbian Film, which he was instrumental in having banned nationally after he and Cat once spent a quiet night in on the couch watching the movie together in fast-forward.

But tonight John Rau decides he has no time nor inclination for procrastination. He needs to muddle through the mess that is the State Records Act.

“Cat!” he yells out down the hall. “It has become increasingly apparent to me that the State Records Act is losing its relevance in the digital information age.”

No answer.

“Cat!” he yells again. “How can I make the State Records Act more modern and with-it?”

The cat warily wanders back into the sitting room. Even though he is rarely an active participant in these nightly brain-storming sessions, John Rau finds his indifferent companion a handy spring-board.

Sure enough, after a few moments comes the inevitable “light-bulb” moment.

“Of course! Cat, you’re a genius! I’ll appoint a retired district court judge to review the legislation!”

He looks to his feline friend for approbation, and happily takes his withering glance to mean: “Great call, John. Who else would know more about modernity and technology?”

“Thanks, Cat,” John Rau beams.

Generally, most of these brain-storming sessions result in the appointment of a retired judicial officer to conduct a review of some sort, which both John Rau and his cat always agree is a sensible course in any circumstance.

But the inherent weakness of the existing act to address the nuances of the technological age continues to rankle the Member for Enfield. Cat stealthily slinks to the corner and curls up, ready for one of his owner’s trademark legislative rants. He suspects John Rau has had spent another fiery Question Time having to defend that Jay Weatherill guy who stole his job.

Sure enough, it emerges that the Opposition simply didn’t stop asking about some infernal email that someone in that Jay Weatherill guy’s office once sent about a critical incident in a western suburbs school. As John Rau explains it, they know what was in the email, but they don’t know to whom it was sent.

“But,” argues John Rau with a flourish, “the pre-email-age Records Act doesn’t care to whom it was sent.”

Cat yawns and licks his haunches, which the Attorney takes as an invitation to elaborate.

“For example,” he explains, “if five agencies have a copy of document A, it is not required under the State Records Act that five versions of document A are reposed in the state records. It is only required that that record, being document A, is retained somewhere.”

John Rau stops for a moment to let the point sink in. He sometimes wonders why he left the bar, with such a deft knack for simple, eloquent exposition.

“Pay attention, Cat; now comes the tricky bit,” he continues.

“It could be forwarded on to a third party in a way where the person with the ‘e-mail’ in their machine goes into ‘Outlook’ and presses a button called ‘Forward’…” (he illustrates the significance of every second noun by drawing imaginary inverted commas in the air with his fingers) “…and then a little thing pops up and they go to their address book, they put in ‘Mr Cat’ and they hit ‘send’. In that hypothetical, the only thing that has happened to the original document is that, above the top line somewhere, there is a thing that says, ‘Forwarded by Bloggs’.”

Cat still doesn’t know who Bloggs is, but he is a recurring character in John Rau’s regular hypothetical scenarios. His tongue moves to his paws, which John Rau takes as assent that he has understood his heavily-simplified explanation of the electronic mailing system.

“On the other hand,” he continues, “it is possible that a document might be obtained and a commentary on the document, some other comment about the document or some additional document is added to that document, and then that completely different document be then forwarded on somewhere else. Now that is obviously a different situation to the first situation that I have tried to describe.”

“Obviously,” agrees the cat silently.

“So you see my problem here, Cat,” concludes the Attorney.

“All I can say with confidence is the bit of the document that is a replication of the document that we have had in the public domain since October last year is, and was, and remains, a document which was properly classified as an official record.”

“But surely,” the Cat seems to imply through a furrowed brow, “Surely not merely the substance of the document but its recipient is material information for an official record.”

“Well, exactly, Cat,” says the Member for Enfield. “And that’s just the sort of thing my retired district court judge will nut out. I’ll take this to cabinet next week. They’ll like this. They love appointing retired judges to things. If only we had more retired judges; we could solve all this Government’s problems!”

The Cat senses that the evening is building to the familiar rant about that Jay Weatherill guy who apparently stole his owner’s job, and surreptitiously edges towards the door.

“He thinks he’s the only Henley Beach High alumnis who can become Premier?” mutters John Rau. “Well, he’s not!”

Cat turns and gives him a pitying look.

“No, not bloody Paul Caica! Me, Cat! Me. Get with the program.”

The Attorney-General’s voice crescendos and breaks; he exhales loudly and slowly unclenches his fists, watching as his live-in companion saunters out of the room. He stands alone in the empty room.

“I know, Cat, I know. Show you the money.”

He slumps heavily back onto the couch and, for the third time this week, puts on Jerry Maguire, muttering quietly to himself: “I’ll show you the money … I’ll show everyone the money.”

Tom Richardson is on Twitter: @TomRichardson

John Rau is on Twitter: @JohnRauMP

John Rau’s Cat is on Twitter: @JohnRausCat

Tom Richardson is InDaily’s political commentator and Channel Nine’s political reporter.