With frontbencher Jonno Duniam’s decision the bail out of politics, the Liberals are not just further depleted, but the parliament is losing someone of the calibre we want to see there.

Duniam performs well on policy and on the politics. He looks for compromises (often more than his party does), can negotiate in the Senate, and comes across strongly in the media. At 43 he had a long career ahead, even if the Coalition’s future appears bleak. So why jump, especially as he says he has no job lined up?

He referred, as would be expected, to family reasons – three young sons. But notably, he also admitted he was “exhausted”.

Citing the February leadership change as “catalysing” his decision, he gave an insight into how it feels to be inside politics at high pressure points.

When you take a job seriously, you give it everything. You get up every day, you go hard, you do your best. You try not to let anyone down and you try and cover the field. In opposition, you’ve got to be everywhere, talking to everyone, doing as much as you can or else you’ll get completely missed. The leadership change was an exhausting process. It was a difficult one. I mean we’d come off the back of dealing with net zero, again internally as our party grappled with that issue. That personally was very exhausting. I’d only just taken on the home affairs portfolio. We had our response to Bondi, again a deeply exhausting process, one that I put a lot of effort into, supported by others of course. But, when the leadership change came along, it started........

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