It's 5.50am on a Saturday in May, 2017 and Ipswich mayor Paul Pisasale, one of Australia’s most successful local government politicians, is at the airport heading home after a decadent visit to Melbourne.

The previous afternoon he had spent an hour with prostitute “JoJo” at the Westin Hotel. It was a session allegedly organised by a property developer with a project in Pisasale's south-east Queensland city of 210,000 people, who for legal reasons we’ll call Mr A.