I would have thought a lawyer might have something more to contribute than "my brilliant career - unlike hers"

There's an extraordinarily tin eared bit of reminiscence by Helen Dale in The Australia about her (apparent) time in high school debating in the late 1980's with the late rape accuser of  Christian Porter.

It will no doubt slide behind a paywall again soon, so let's preserve some bits here (with my bold):

I knew her for the best part of two years as she lived her best life, cutting a swathe through young Australia’s cultural and intellectual milieu, laying down a marker for future achievement that was never fulfilled.

Somewhere out there, there may lurk a television recording of us competing against each other in the national finals of a public speaking contest. My strong suspicion is that the recording no longer exists, for the simple reason that I went on to enjoy the sort of public success that everyone expected Jane to achieve, and that many of our contemporaries also achieved. That broadcast would surely have surfaced in 1995 if it were going to at any point; people were determined to find extant footage, and not merely photographs of me from high school.

Jane, Christian Porter, many of Jane’s friends so broken by her suicide, and I participated in a variety of events, organised in such a way that one kept running into the same clutch of high achievers from the same group of posh schools around the country over, usually, the last two years of high school. Jane was unusual in that she started young, in year 10, and so had a three-year run at the top.....

The activities in question formed part of an entire ecosystem — I have no idea whether it still exists — of debating, public speaking and academic competitions fought out among elite Australian high school students during the relevant period.

The largest of these was National Capital Seminar, held under the auspices of the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Trust for Young Australians. It’s the only event I will name, and I do so because it had 100 student ­attendees each year. There are simply too many people out there from Jane’s and my year who no doubt recall both of us for me to keep it hidden from their view. People from ­National Capital Seminar went on to become high-flyers in ­varied fields — politicians, QCs, scientists, ­industrialists, artists, entrepreneurs.

Rupert no doubt will be upset if I re-publish the whole thing, but let's just end with this:

At the time, Jane was openly spoken of as a future prime minister. Those friends who knew her post-high school and have suggested as much to the media are not dissembling on this point.

Mind you, the same was also said of me, and of another boy.

OK, Dale does go on to say that she never believed it herself, because she was closeted queer; but it's so refreshing, isn't it, to hear that everyone else thought she was brilliant.

Dale has long had people questioning her autobiographic claims, and not just the ones that formed the basis of her early identity scandal.  This article will do nothing to lessen the impression that she exaggerates when it suits.