Was this article written by a computer program?
Standard Progressive Propaganda 2.0?
Just hit 'Start' and it prints a predictable diatribe that sounds just like a hand-wringing human windbag.

"Australian values have their origins in a two century old European colonial heritage"

No, they have a 6000-year old European heritage.
We are simply one of the most recent branches of a very old and large tree.
But you'd rather ignore that, as it may encourage a "racist" awareness of history.

In the 20th century, it was countries with very clear identities that produced totalitarian tryants.
The Anglosphere did not. Perhaps we should be thankful for our vague values.

Onya, Shockadelic.

This is a typically long winded article written in elegant and boring prose, in which Bill Calcutt shows his social credentials as a card carrying member of the brahmin caste, by kicking the crap out of his own people and his own civilisation. People like Bill have been conditioned by their peers to think that such attitudes are supposed to be the defining characteristic of an "intelligent" person. I personally think other wise.

It used to be that educated elites like Bill used to be the most nationalistic and patriotic around. But that all changed during WW1 when so many of his caste got mowed down with machine guns. Since nationalism and patriotism had caused the decimation of the idealistic, educated caste, the Bill Calcutt clones thought that it was now fashionable lurch right over to the other extreme.

It is not surprising that the four Britons who are now considered to be Britain's most notorious traitors (Phillby, Burgiss, McLean and Blunt) who were all ruling class twits, were educated in Britain's most prestigious university.

The only good thing to come from people like Bill, who never tire of putting the boot into their own people, is that the rest of society are becoming very leery of them. It is no wonder that Bill is whining about today's press, the Left used to own the media and it is absolutely mortified that is privileged position is being challenged. There is now a thriving section of the press giving alternative views to the standard trendy left wing line, and the people who are doing that are obviously very intelligent and well able to make mincemeat out of the standard party line arguments of people like Bill.

Thanks for the article, Bill.

I think you've understated a couple of things. Firstly. the degree of integration of media in politics. This has become more apparent as the gender mix changes, so that we now have journalists and politicians of different genders mixing and they are often doing more than just mixing. The list of politico-journalistic marriages/relationships is now quite long, mostly on the Left, but not exclusively. Moreover, political organisations now employ more journalists than some quite large media firms, select media people to stand and media firms hire a lot of ex-politicians. I've previously described a politico-legal-media class, which I think is becoming more pronounced. There are a few economists in there as well and the odd medico, but not many other professions within our major political players.

Second, media struggles with the new tech. It's OK when it's simply a new way to typeset, but when it's a whole new way to interact with an audience, then as the record shows, they tend to try it than abandon it. Both Fairfax and News have reduced the number of articles for which public comments are enabled and other smaller players adopt strategies that vary but usually mean "we decide what you can say".

I do agree with your characterisation of politicking as a race to the bottom. We get the representation we deserve, after all.

Good article. The dominance of News limited and the tabloidisation of Fairfax has dumbed down public discourse in our country. Large companies now have massive PR units, larger by far than Government and mainline media. These entities push their own barrow and are indifferent to the national interest by and large. These power centres tend to divide us so developing a coherent set of national values is made more difficult. The old "fair go" ethic has stood us well but we need to articulate and talk about positive values not the negative ones all too prevalent in our current public discourse.