Driven by the Merri-Bek City Council and local community groups such as Friends of Merri Creek, the restoration of the Merri Creek has been wildly successful. To walk down the track is to feel like you’ve stumbled into a completely different city. One would hardly recognise this place as the runoff hub of Melbourne’s industrialised north, a deathly quiet place that stank of something unnatural just two generations ago.

Once more, the substantial population living in contamination zones on land they don’t own are left to their own devices. There is no state to save them, no legal enterprise assured of victory to fund their fight. The only option provided by the powers that solely exist for this type of catastrophe is to surrender to the elements.

‘We applaud the Sri Lankan Government’s devotion to human rights and their devotion to democratic pluralism,’ Abbott said flatly, after touching down in Sri Lanka. Just days before, the BBC had released the culmination of four years of research: an hour-long report on the human rights nightmare that was the final push of the Sri Lankan Civil War. As a result, even close allies felt compelled to condemn Sri Lanka’s human rights record. That is, except for us.

As a haver of autism myself, I felt kind of numb to it. I am, of course, morally repulsed by the concept of schooling run on social Darwinism. But when you consider what has been thrown at Australia’s minority of the intellectually disabled, and in many cases the greater disabled community as a whole, a proposal such as Hanson’s seems par for the course.