The 22-year-old first stole the show at Monday night’s community cabinet meeting a Charles Sturt University when she called on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to take advantage of his continuing popularity to adopt a more humane approach to the issue of asylum seekers.

And by late yesterday the broadcast journalism honours student was winging her way to Singapore – courtesy of Channel 9 – before catching a ferry to Bintan Island today to report live on the issue.

Ms Hickey spent much of her day yesterday fielding calls from media outlets across the nation wanting to learn more about the young woman who dared put the PM in his place.

She had completed radio interviews with the ABC in Melbourne, 2UE in Sydney and local radio 2BS before Channel 9 trumped the lot with their offer.

After quickly packing, Ms Hickey was flown by helicopter to Sydney where she was due to board a flight to Indonesia last yesterday.

And all this attention started from a single question on Monday night.

Having been picked out of a sea of hands to ask a question at the public forum, Ms Hickey said: “Look Kevin, enough is enough when it comes to asylum seekers. For the last six weeks it’s been going around and around in circles. Why don’t you take the opportunity to completely change the discourse, the way Australians think about asylum seekers and stop this around in circles business and just stop this fear-mongering?”

The question brought applause from the 400-strong crowd in attendance, but so did the PM’s response.

Mr Rudd was clearly ready for the question, and he left Ms Hickey and the audience in no doubt that he believed the government was taking the right approach.

Mr Rudd said the government had adopted an approach that sought to be “seeks to be hardline on people smugglers [and] humane in dealing with asylum seekers”, and one that met the nation’s obligations.

And while he admitted the stance would not be popular, Mr Rudd said: “We are not elected to be popular. We are elected to deliver on the policies we took to the last election.”

But Ms Hickey was unimpressed with the response.

“What I was asking was could he use his popularity to change the way Australians think about asylum seekers,” she said.

“He has done it with the forgotten generation and Kyoto, so why not asylum seekers?”