Super Saturday quickly turned into a Sombre Sunday for the Coalition, who experienced heavy losses in this weekend’s by-elections.

Formidable defeat awaited the Liberal Party in the three seats they contested, with the results suggesting traditional conservative voters are abandoning their liberal party base and searching for other independent alternatives. It seems those on the ideological right are fed up with the Labor-lite tendencies of Turnbull leadership. No better microcosm of this could be seen then in Longman. The government was thrashed, losing by around 45 percent to Labor’s 55, in what was knife-edge marginal seat.   This re

Meanwhile, there was a One Nation resurgence, with voters turning to Hanson’s party to the tune of 16%.

Ross Fitzgerald says this is symptomatic of the conservative voter’s disillusionment with the party that is supposed to represent them.   

“I really don’t think Malcolm Turnbull can win this election,” says Fitzgerald.

“That’s because in many ways, he is Labor-lite. If for example, the Liberal Party listened to the general electors who are very concerned about immigration, who are very concerned about prices, rather then emissions, they might have a chance. But they won’t change their policy so long as Malcolm Turnbull is leader.”

“A Turnbull victory at the next election could well be more dangerous to the Liberal Party longterm in effect than a defeat which would enable a Liberal Party to rethink and regroup in opposition under a centre-right leader.

Listen to the Full Show podcast of Overnight with Michael McLaren on July 30

Listen to the Full Show podcast of Overnight with Warren Moore on July 27

Warren Moore spoke with property expert Michael Yardney on 2GB Overnights to discuss the latest Domain real estate figures and find out just which suburbs have seen a boost.

Yesterday forty years ago, the first “test tube baby” was born in a United Kingdom hospital.

Louise Joy Brown was delivered via caesarean section under torchlight, to avoid tipping off tides of media congregating outside to report on the birth of the world’s first IVF baby.

Forty years on, some 10 million people have IVF technology to thank for their existence.

“It was quite an incredible breakthrough,” says Professor Christopher Murphy from Sydney University.

“We had been doing similar things with animals. The basic biological research to make all this possible had been done quite a few years earlier. But 1978 was the year in which the availability of the technology and the possibility reached the headlines."

With 1 in every 23 Australia children now a product of IVF, the country is in the midst of an IVF “boom.” The business has become a lucrative one, with the infertility industry now worth $ 4 billion annually.

“It’s now used not just as a mechanism to overcome traditional infertility. It's used as a way to avoid the birth of babies with terrible diseases that are likely to end up in them either not being born at all, or being born with diseases they’ll die from very quickly.”

Michael McLaren talks with Spectator writer Terry Barnes on the news of the week.

Listen to the Full Show podcast of Overnight with Michael McLaren on July 26

Michael McLaren chats with Troy Lennon from the Daily Telegraph for the weekly history segment.

Join Kim Rubenstein from the Australian National University as she discusses whether dual citizenship could become an issue for state politicians.

It seems the plight of our drought-affected farmers is finally starting to resonate.

By all indications, the city consciousness is now in tune with the harrowing lack of rain in our regional and rural communities. The outpouring of support for farmer Les Jones seemed to substantiate this, who courtesy of public donations, will no longer be forced to shoot his starving cattle.

But Michael McLaren thinks more needs to be done, and is calling on government to step up and deliver for our despairing farmers, who are among the least subsidised in the world.  

“There is a drought on in the agricultural sense, there is a lack of water,” says Michael.

“But that’s not the only drought. There is a political drought, there’s a vision drought, there’s a leadership drought in Australia. This country is not water poor, we’re vision poor.”

“And when you combine all of this, it makes the natural drought just that much more difficult to deal with.”

To remedy this, Michael is calling for a future drought fund to be considered.

“We have a future fund that is to future proof the Australian taxpayer from the effect of public servants retiring and accessing their retirement and their super. But we don’t have a future fund for drought, which is just as predictable.”

“Would it not be such a bad idea to top a little money aside in a pot, a future fund, which could be accessed by farmers and delivered by government, in the perennial circumstance of drought?”