Billed to speak after Tony Abbott in Melbourne recently, I sought inspiration from his foreword years ago to Twilight of The Elites.

‘To the Paddington republican set,’ he wrote, ‘Flint should have been one of them. Weren’t people like Flint supposed to be victims of a racist crown and the boring, conformist Australia which flourished under it? As it happens, “White Australia” in its heyday seems to have given Flint’s family the same welcome as has been more widely extended to people from Asia since the 60s.