“LET them in, let them in,” Lim Kit Siang said of those in the overflow rooms in the Melbourne Multicultural Hub, midway through his 12-day tour in the Antipodes last month.

“We are all Malaysians, right?” the veteran politician swept his arms across the Orange Room, suggesting there was enough room to fit all of what a voice count would tally to 350 people, but relented when organisers invoked local council “rule of law” limiting numbers in each room, in mock reminder of one tenet of New Malaysia.