"I worked as a journalist in a country where the flow of information was controlled by three corporations. Their ability to manipulate the truth made the right to vote largely meaningless, but I was a journalist."
Moore doesn't have an idealized introduction in the novel. From the outset, he is on trial for allegedly inventing quotes to include in his articles. He isn't concerned with politics, or so he says, but he is fully aware of Australia's precarious political situation. When three businesses take control of the media, they also gain control of the government. Moore states his disgust for the system, but he considers all political unrest irrelevant to his career. This quotation demonstrates that his commitment is to news, not to truth.
"He had been a journalist with one story, one cause, one effect. He had been born in the previous geologic age while Gaby was born in the Anthropocene age and easily saw that the enemy was not one nation state but a cloud of companies, corporations, contractors, statutory bodies whose survival meant the degradation of water, air, soil, life itself."
Moore is given an intriguing story arc. Once the pinnacle of age and resentment, he is transformed by his research on Gaby. Since she is young and active in the dark reaches of society, she possesses a perspective to which he could never relate. Gradually he starts to piece together her understanding of political corruption, and it makes perfect sense to him. His stale convictions take on a vibrant new life as he is inspired by Gaby's activism. Thus age learns from youth.
"I didn't give a toss."
Moore is a misanthrope. He's too old, seen to much of life, and been mistreated too many times to care about political or social turmoil. When he learns, along with the rest of the world, about "THE ANGEL OF THE LORD," he doesn't give it a second thought. The world was a weird enough place without him adding his opinion to the mix, so he remained apathetic. Until he really dives into Gaby's life, Moore feels no compulsion to concern himself with anything beyond his immediate needs.
"I thought, not for the first time, that it is Melbourne's talent to produce these extraordinary eighteenth-century figures. In a more contested space, life would compress them, but down south, at the Paris end of Collins Street, there was nothing to stop him expanding to occupy the frame. He was a Gillray engraving -- indulgence, opinion, power."
Moore is assigned to investigate Gaby's disappearance by his old friend Woody Townes. Townes is a man with his hand on many a shady endeavor in Australia. Moore's apparent misanthropy is seen in this quotation as he paints his patron in a dull light. As if Townes was an ancient statue looming on a street corner, he is accredited with the more greedy aspect of political activism.
