During the 1993 federal election campaign, an onlooker in Broken Hill, Australia’s toughest union town, was astonished to see Peter Reith alone on a street corner extolling the virtues of Fightback, the Liberal Party’s free market policy credo.

“Initially, he was ignored but eventually, he was encircled by an increasingly angry crowd of burly miners and furious women denouncing his message,” the onlooker recalled.