The new prime minister of Australia (elected 7 September) looks to be good news for the pet passions of that country’s right wing – climate change denial, an end to political ‘correctness’, restrictions on access to abortion and stopping the supposed ‘flood’ of asylum seekers. These are just some of the emotive issues that carried the British-born and Jesuit-trained Abbott to power over the bickering Centre-Left Australian Labor Party.

Abbott, leader of the Centre-Right Liberal Party, previously came to inter­national attention when he was so effectively pilloried for his barrage of sexist comments, in a speech given by the former Labor leader Julia Gillard, that her riposte went viral on YouTube as an example of a woman standing up against sexism.