‘The government which stopped the boats can’t slow the planes’, concluded Michael McLaren, the Macquarie Media Network’s rising young star. He was referring to the Turnbull government’s ungracious and hasty dismissal of Tony Abbott’s carefully reasoned argument for a significant reduction in the immigration rate.

McLaren has long identified this as a frontline issue among voters, along with energy prices, seriously declining school standards, the failure to harvest water, crime and allowing jihadists to return, all coincidentally issues on which Abbott, the only potential leader, offers a solution.