But in fact, the many details that surrounded the larger theme of a government in crisis weren’t so much surprising, as just confirmation of what she has long known.

Namely, that a great many problems in today’s world can be linked back to the year 2001.

McGuinness, a prominent publisher, has been ruminating on this single, momentous year ever since she set out to write a book about it - The Year That Everything Changed, which is featured at this year’s Canberra Writers Festival.

It was the year of a monumental global event - the terrorism attack on the Twin Towers in New York on September 11 - and the year both George W Bush and John Howard came into power.

Incidentally - as she pointed out, you couldn’t make it up - 2001 is the year Peter Dutton won the seat of Dickson.

It was also a seismic period in Australian politics, with the Tampa Crisis - and Howard’s infamous campaign slogan - coming to define political discourse around migration and refugees for years to come.

In the same year, McGuinness lost a child; her son was stillborn.

In the book, she tracks, month by month, the ways in which the wider world, and her own, private one, changed for good.

“I feel like so many of the threads from 2001 have continued to the present, so all those 2001 chickens are coming home to roost,” she said.

As the book’s tagline says, it’s not over yet.

“All the arguments about immigration and fear that were flowing around the air, the times have suited Dutton very well,” she said.

“[Today] polarisation is in politics, in the media, with the rise of Fox news, and it's echoed in Australia with Sky News, and I think over the past few weeks, people have become much more aware of the extreme conservatism of the views expressed on Sky News at night.

"Climate change was a hot topic in 2001, because George W Bush started to pull back from the Kyoto protocol, and the way that climate change has been politicised since then. We are seeing playing out in our own politics this week as we have for the past 10 years.”

Her book’s publication also coincided with the senate inquiry into stillbirth, a development that has helped her talk more openly about her experience in interviews.

“Since then end of May I've been talking about it a lot, and at first that was overwhelming, but I've been given courage really by the number of people who have contacted me directly or via social media and reached out and offered support and shared their own experiences," she said.

"So it's actually been quite empowering and encouraging to think that it may lead to some change that will hopefully lead to a reduction in the rate of stillbirths in Australia, which is one thing that hasn't changed since 2001.”

As well as speaking about her book, McGuinness will be taking part in one of the festival’s special events, a panel discussion entitled New World Disorder, a chance to dissect some of the big issues of our times.

She said it was just one in a festival program that was filled with provocative ideas, public and private trauma, and all the conversations that arise in today’s unstable political climate.

“I think that's the great thing about writers festivals, to be honest, that they offer a different kind of space to reflect on issues that are swirling around us on Twitter and on the news and in the papers,” she said.

“It's a calmer space for conversation and reflection, and our world is so charged and frantic that I think these conversations are more important than ever.”

The Canberra Writers Festival runs from August 23-26. Visit canberrawritersfestival.com.au for the full program.