Our memories are the most confounding of our abilities.

We have the capacity to remember the most astounding detail of events trapped well in the past while being incapable of recalling where we left, five minutes ago, our glasses or the book we’re been reading.

Some can remember with absolute clarity and 40 years on from the event, the moment they first stepped foot inside a school gate, yet struggle with the name of a person they have just met.

And memories can play the most devilish tricks on us. Who hasn’t heard stories, or had an anecdote of their own to recall, about parked cars and where they’ve been left?

All of this of course is what has made the level of one’s recall such an impregnable defence for those confronted, under oath, with a demand for detail.

Who among us has forgotten the marvels of failed entrepreneur Alan Bond’s memory? Or the complete inability of members of both the previous government and the Australian Wheat Board to recall any of the events that transpired to eventually deliver hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of then Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Scientists working to stave off the effects of Parkinsons and Alzeimers diseases are experimenting with the use of electric currents to stimulate the brain to unlock memories trapped by the onset of age and failing capacity.

Elderly sufferers of these diseases are now strapping metal colander-style contraptions on their heads for a few minutes a day and plugging into an electric current in the quest to find a way to hang on to the lifetimes stored inside their heads.

I’m not suggesting for a minute that this admittedly still experimental therapy should be used on people like Queensland Health Minister Stephen Robertson who took to the witness stand last week to give an account of his dealing with former Beattie government colleague Gordon Nuttall and leading businessman Ken Talbot.

But such a device would be handy.

Mr Robertson’s testimony, that he has no recollection of the reason for a dinner meeting in Parliament House with the pair, nor what was discussed, nor who organised it, but could recall that nothing untoward was put on the table may not have helped one iota the examination into the payment by mining magnate Talbot of $300,000 to Mr Nuttall.

But it has surely given heart to any of us who have ever wondered at our own diminishing abilities.

If, after all, a minister of the crown amply forewarned that his memory would be called on in such a vital trial that speaks to the heart of the integrity of the government he serves, can under oath come up so completely empty, then surely we should all have protection from bosses angered by our failure on detail.

I wouldn’t count on it though. Our memories, or at least their acknowledged frailties, and the need for future detail are why we are taught early on to write things down.

People in positions of influence and tremendous authority generally keep diaries of all matters that transpire during the course of a working day.

One would expect, for instance, a minister of mines – as Mr Robertson was at the time of his dinner date with Mr Nuttall, Mr Talbot and another, as yet unnamed mining executive – to write down somewhere exactly the why and what of that gathering.

After all, the Strangers Dining Room of Parliament House is not a particularly private place. Members of both government and opposition gather there in view of each other to hear the lobbying of various constituents.

And as minister for mines Mr Robertson should surely have been aware that Mr Talbot had at the time lodged with Treasury or was about to lodge a request for a $28 million loan from the state government to assist with the relocation of a railway line to transport his coal from mine to port.

His failure to recognise the importance of his position and the need to keep on the record a meeting of the nature of the one that transpired in 2002 must be worrying Premier Anna Bligh.

It is after all not Mr Robertson’s memory that has cast doubt on the integrity of the Queensland Labor government.

No one expects anyone to have a perfect memory. But the least all of us should be able to expect is that there is a record of the business of government in whatever form it takes.

Mr Robertson would not require a memory if he understood the demands of his office.

His failure in the witness stand leaves the rest of us wondering what other gatherings between ministers and money have occurred and to what result.