The recent American election – which thankfully resulted in a return of Barack Obama to the White House – should provoke thought and reflection for Tony Abbott and his Coalition. Americans have comprehensively rejected negative and obstructionist politics. They have rejected abject and dangerous climate change denial, and they have rejected extremist Tea Party insistences of relentless and unconscionable cuts to education, health and welfare – and the socially unjust mythology of “trickle-down economics” which, in Australia’s case, would give self-interested, ultra right-wing dynastic billionaires such as Gina Rinehart effective sovereignty over the country.

Importantly, too, American women have roundly rejected the Republican Party’s frighteningly ignorant and fundamentalist, religion-driven politics which threaten to set gender equality back decades, and so closely resembles Abbott’s track-record on women’s reproductive rights, and his pronouncements about the role of women in public life and leadership roles.

Myopic conservatives such as Mr Wiseman should avoid counting their chickens just yet.