Cosmopolitans were horrified when country sawmill worker Ricky Muir was elected to the Senate in 2013 as a representative of the Motoring Enthusiasts Party. When the celebrated “roo poo” video surfaced a few days after the poll Fairfax sniffed: “In a video taken from his YouTube account, which was made private soon after the election on Saturday night, Mr Muir appears to be filmed taking part in a backyard kangaroo faeces fight.

“The video, titled ‘Family Fight in Australia’, appears to depict the likely senator, who sports a thick moustache and goatee, running around a garden with his friends, who are hurling kangaroo faeces and laughing hysterically.

“We know it is kangaroo faeces because the person holding the video camera picks up a brown pellet, examines it, and says: ‘This is kangaroo poo. Yum yum’.”

But on Wednesday evening, after the Victorian Senate results were formally declared and the curtain run down on Muir’s parliamentary career, he was the subject of a soft-soap report on the ABC News website.

What might explain this? Just one sentence makes it all crystal clear: “He supported same-sex marriage and helped broker a deal … to stop babies and children being sent to Nauru.”

Ah. The big issues for the battlers.

A working class hero is something to be.