No, it wasn’t another sartorial statement on ScoMo’s scone, it was a cap on migration intake. “Enough, enough, enough,” he said.

Buses in the city are full, roads are congested, and schools are bloated, the Prime Minister opined before saying the annual intake of migrants needed to be lowered.

Those in the know in Orange have previously said this issue was not just a matter of simple subtraction – immigrants fill gaps in the workforce and also create new businesses and jobs in regional towns.

Others believe an influx of immigrants into Orange in line with or above what is already occurring would stretch the city’s job market beyond the point of elasticity.

“There’s not enough jobs as it is – how high will the city’s unemployment rate rise if we have more people move here in search of work?” seems to be a reasonably common catch cry by the anti-regional immigration brigade.

But how much merit does that argument really hold?

At last count, 83.2 per cent of the 38,000 people living in Orange identified their country of birth as Australia. That’s a tick under 32,000 people.

The next highest was Indian (1 per cent), New Zealand (0.9 per cent) and Philippines (0.5 per cent). All told, the non-Australian-born population of Orange adds up to somewhere in the region of 6,000 people.

Many of these people have arrived in the last couple of years, so what impact has their arrival had on the unemployment rate in Orange?

In September, 2015, the city’s unemployment rate was 7.11 per cent. As of June this year, it was 4.5 per cent.

That’s almost the same – 4.54 per cent – in March, 2011, when Orange’s total population was still under 35,000.

Obviously there are many factors at play in shaping Orange’s job market, not least the growth or decline of the city’s major employers and industries – health and mining.

But to suggest the addition of immigrants to our city ranks would shrink the work opportunities is misleading, verging on wrong, when it has been shown immigrants create more jobs.

You don’t need to keep that information under your cap, Prime Minister.