If you want to get a rough idea of where Australians stand on a particular issue, commission a report by a Sydney CBD pollster or ACT think tank. If you want to know exactly what they think, ask a Melbourne street sweeper.

And now that Shaun Turner has said what most people wouldn’t dare say about acknowledgements of country it would be nice to hear his two bob’s worth on a few other topics.

We know, from the interviews Mr Turner has given since winning his unfair dismissal claim, that compulsory virtue-signalling isn’t the only thing that got his goat as he cruised the kerbs of Darebin. We know that he believes Australians should have the option of a nuclear-fuelled future, for example, and that this was one reason he voted for Peter Dutton – the less policy-centred one being that ‘the alternative was Elmer Fudd’. Critically, we know that the upper back pain Mr Turner suffers is due not to a chip on his 60-year-old white shoulder but to an RSI condition which doctors have warned him will only get worse if he returns to the job from which he was so egregiously sacked.

So nobody would blame him if he spent his compensation award on a Gold Coast unit and a golf cart. But then we’d never be privy to his views on stuff like defence and puberty blockers. For that to happen he needs a more enduring public platform. Ten years ago, he could have found one starting a podcast called ‘Sweeping Statements’ in which the news cycle is distilled into a handful of common-sense, nod-inducing generalisations. But starting a podcast in Australia today is like wearing a keffiyeh on campus; not the best way to get noticed.

And there’s an obvious alternative, as I was reminded last week watching the editor of this magazine and former Labor MP Michael Danby lamenting the absence of anyone in the Libs’ lower ranks capable of speaking truth to power. Short of appending a folder of press clippings to a letter of application to the Libs’ head office, Mr Turner couldn’t make his eligibility for right-of-centre elected office any clearer. So let’s hope that someone in Sussan Ley’s office was also watching, and that Mr Turner is already being considered for a role, and that his remit won’t be limited to the petty politics of a local council. If we can learn anything from the victory of commie rabble-rouser Zohran Mamdani in the New York mayoral nominations, it is that in these TikTok times, a lack of previous experience and a coherent manifesto does not disqualify you from the highest office.

At the very least, Mr Turner would be a credible contender for Dickson, the seat which Mr Dutton lost. And he’s already given us reason to believe that if elected, he could shore up what has long been a Coalition weakness in the cut and thrust of parliamentary debate. Comparing Mr Albanese to a Looney Tunes loser may have been inspired by Donald Trump’s habit of belittling opponents with names like Pocahontas and Crooked Hillary, but it also evokes fond memories of Paul Keating’s coinages for adversaries like Wilson (Foul-mouthed grub) Tuckey, Peter (All tip no iceberg) Costello, and Andrew (Faithful old dog that needs putting down) Peacock.

In the meantime, for his debut campaign slogan, Mr Turner could do worse than channel another street sweeper. One who ‘Knows a broom’s a broom and knows it’s wicked to tell a lie.’ Such is the ethos of Jo the crossing sweeper in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House. Despite his lack of education, Jo has an innate understanding of right and wrong, and his child-like honesty is a foil to the amoral venality of the wealthy and powerful. It must have been Jo that the director Peter Bogdanovich was thinking about when he created Billy, the simple-minded street sweeper of his 1971 masterpiece The Last Picture Show. And while Thalia, the fictional Texas town which it’s set in may not have much in common with real suburban Melbourne, there is one salutary parallel. Both are communities whose self-worth has been eroded by their capitulation to a new order. In post-war Texas, that was the ascendancy of the oil business over the cattle business. In post-Andrews Victoria it is the ascendancy of woke in every kind of work. In 1960s Texas the process was as unstoppable as the truck which eventually flattens Billy. But it’s not too late for suburban Melbourne – or any other Victorian community. All it needs is for somebody to spearhead what their Liberal party so desperately needs: sweeping reforms.