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It has been said before that legislating against hurt feelings is ridiculous. It is. But where has this notion – that hurt feelings based on race and ethnicity are worse than any other, or of a quality that demands special protection and compensation – come from? And when did the cause of this malady, this new-fashioned ‘hate-speech’, become the halitosis of community discourse —where no-one seems to know they have the problem, but fellow citizens, at least those sure of their own immaculate oral hygiene, turn away in disgust.

I think “hate speech” is just another product of the golden-age of offence-taking semantics, replete with neologisms and redefinition of some old favourites. Take a bow Julia Gillard, whose lasting contribution to public life will, of course, have nothing to do with her disastrous prime-ministership and all to do with the redefining of misogyny as sexism. And not since Carl Linnaeus, the great Swedish taxonomist of the eighteenth century have we seen such excitement about the combining of Greek and Latin roots to create new species of hitherto nameless dreads such as homophobia, transphobia and Islamophobia. They are absolutely everywhere nowadays, hiding in plain sight in households not so much like your own, but just like your neighbour’s.

Hate-speech was previously something only heard at white-supremacist rallies. It is now a favourite pastime of bored suburbanites, probably those forced to drink at home, lest they glass each other with broken bottles of New Zealand sauvignon blanc at Kings Cross restaurants after 3 am.

Dr Craig Emerson, ex-Labor government minister and amateur chanteur, once ridiculed the idea of hate-speakers lurking in the suburbs (in their “lounge rooms” no less):

“Legislators who make and repeal laws do so where there is an identified problem they consider needs addressing. What is the problem that repeal of section 18C will remedy or at least ameliorate? Who are the punters, cowering in their lounge rooms, repressed by a law that stops them publicly giving a gobful of racial abuse to indigenous Australians and ethnic minorities?” (The Australian 5/4/14)

But, a feeling in his waters must have told him those gobby punters were real, and cacophonous little beggars to boot:

“@bairdjulia Ah, the joys of free speech. Just wait till 18C is amended – it’ll be a cacophony of racial abuse” (@DrCraigEmerson, twitter 2016)

Dr Emerson has a PhD but it seems not everyone with a university education is immune from committing hate-speech. Nor does being social media savvy spare bright young things from the consequences of failing to divine the hate-speech-horrors that lurk in their little hearts of darkness. The notorious Queensland University of Technology 18C case, still before the courts, involves a claim for $250,000 worth of hate-speech hurt. But forgetting the students for a moment, imagine the vicarious trauma of the officers of the Court who have had to listen to filth like this:

“Just got kicked out of the unsigned ­indigenous computer room. QUT stopping segregation with segregation?”

And wade through ordure like this:

“I wonder where the white supremacist computer lab is.”

I, for one, am happy to unselfishly recommend compulsory tax-payer funded psychotherapy to ferret-out the unconscious hatred hidden in the psyches of these young leaders of tomorrow. Sure, there is money to be made, but think of all the good that will come of it.

I’ve discovered two types of this new-fashioned “hate speech”: The first is the vulgar-abuse type, favoured by rednecks and yobs. Nice people like Quadrant readers don’t actually personally know any of these snarling spittle-flecked racists, but may have inadvertently seen a Youtube clip of a hyperventilating piece of poor white trash screaming at a Muslim woman on a train. This is your archetypal ‘A Current Affair’ hate spruiker – Mrs Hate, if you will – an overweight, edentulous, thirty-something mum, the sort Martin King would fearlessly confront – with her trolley full of groceries and three kids hanging off the side in the Woolies car park. Be warned, if you oppose 18C you clearly think it is OK; nay, you secretly relish the possibility of unleashing legions of Mrs Hates, and all their tattooed, car-mag reading defactos to racially vilify our innocent brown-skinned brothers and sisters. Why public transport is the preferred staging ground for these shenanigans I have no idea. It may have something to do with Jeremy Clarkson’s infamous quip about public transport being for poor people. In which case, it is at least an economic problem as much as a cultural one.

The second sort of ‘hate speech’’ is done by clever dicks, like Andrew Bolt. This is shaming speech that, by definition, never occurs on public transport, or out the window of an HDT commodore, but by cunning word-smithery. It is an especially virulent form of speech that causes compensable psychological injury. Sadly, the originator of the hate-speech (the hate-speaker) may not even know they were the hating sort until it is revealed to them by a judge. I guess it must be something like being diagnosed with lung cancer when you don’t even smoke: “Well, I believe you my friend, but I’m afraid the X-rays don’t lie.”

Now it goes without saying that hate-speech must be banned. Banning things is very popular in Australian politics – think live-animal exports, greyhound racing and late night alcohol consumption. Politicians bent on banning something nasty like hate-speech usually rely on two types of information:

1. A report from a panel that mental illness and suicide rates are high in the group exposed to the hateful behaviour and

2. A touching anecdote or two

The problem with the first is that suicide rates are unbearably high in any group or demographic that is the subject of a discussion about suicide or the subject of a sentence, starting “Suicide rates are…’. For instance, it is well known that depression and suicide rates are very high amongst older, particularly widowed, men. So let’s have no more nasty talk about pensions, lest we find grandad with his head in the oven again. “Not to worry son, just keeping warm. They say we won’t be able to afford the heating bills if Mr Morrison has his way.”

Politicians love to discover suicide. Bill Shorten did just that in the SSM plebiscite debate:

“Let me be as blunt as possible: a ‘no’ campaign would be an emotional torment for gay teenagers, and if one child commits suicide over the plebiscite, then that is one too many.”

Substitute “hate-speech” into this sentence and the game is up for the 18C reform. But curiously, the same thought experiment doesn’t work for greyhound owners and trainers. Imagine Mike Baird:

“Let me be as blunt as possible: a few people in the industry may commit suicide because their incomes, their families and livelihoods are ruined by this ban, but in the end, it’s a fair price to save those adorable skinny dogs.”

The problem with the anecdotal platform, the sad stories of hurt and humiliation told to the local MP to lift the mood at a sausage-sizzle fund raiser, is that if allowed to influence public policy, no-one will be allowed to leave their home. Or stay in their home for that matter because of the awful stories about things that have happened to perfectly undeserving folks minding their own businesses with a TV dinner on their laps.

But why pick race and ethnicity for special protection from shaming speech? Easy, that’s because it is sacrosanct; a core, immutable, defining personal characteristic. That makes racial abuse quite different, from, say, fungus growing under enormous sweaty rolls of breast-fat, or being pig-ugly, or cripplingly socially maladroit, or retarded, or repulsively needy, or constantly and hideously angry without knowing why. You see, these things are purely decorative, lazy affectations, and deserve no protection from shaming speech. These idiots and malodourous misfits just need to suck-it-up. “Chalk it up to the price of privilege my good fellow.”

Beyond Blue helped advertise the link between skin colour and shame with its brilliant anti hate-speech ad: “No one should be made to feel like crap, just for being who they are.” Naturally ‘who they are’ is their race – there was an accompanying picture of a few obviously non-Anglo people to help us along. They’ve got a limited ad budget no-doubt, but it’s curious that they didn’t consider other aspects of identity or ‘who they are’ to warn us to steer clear of. This is the ‘we can see it, so we’ll say it’s the cause’ approach to problem solving. It’s like the tendency to diagnose irritable babies with colic (now ‘gastro-oesophageal reflux’) because feeding, vomiting and pooing are pretty much all babies do. Just like trying to cope with white-people’s reactions to their colour is pretty much all indigenous people do. You know how it is.

Part of the reason for the narrow focus on race is that, from time to time, you can tell racial and ethnic identification by the colour of people’s skin or by their quaint ethnic attire. But other personal, ‘who they are’, attributes are more difficult to attack with the lancinating wit of the hate speaker. For instance, to properly abuse homosexual people on the basis of their core identities (what they do in the bedroom) you often need to ask a few questions, which is difficult from the back of a passing ute. The Doppler effect ruins the atmospherics: “canIjustcheckifyouarequeer, oh you are, then get out of town you poooofff.” And establishing the credentials of an intersex or transsexual individual for some recreational humiliation is a nightmare, because Latinate compound, gender-slagging epithets tend to lose their potency, especially from a passing ute.

Even harder, is establishing the neurocognitive profile of someone on the milder end of the Autistic Spectrum (the old-fashioned Asperger’s Syndrome) for some diverting hatefulness and shaming of their vague weirdness, their inability to keep friends and jobs, find lovers and so forth. You have to start with school reports, then some neuropsychological testing…It’s all too hard. Let’s go for the low hanging fruit of melanin pigment instead.

Psychological injury by shaming people ‘for who they are’ is so much more common and more injurious in everyday life than it is in Andrew Bolt’s columns. For instance, how many more suicides have occurred because a relationship ended in rejection of someone’s core personhood. What compensation, for example, for an unemployed middle-aged man with high cholesterol and a bad back, whose wife leaves because he doesn’t talk; because his only interest is buying parts for his 4WD and his only social skill is ‘mansplaining’ diffs and air filters and his unfashionable views on same-sex marriage and immigration. The luvvies of the left would hate him (coz he reminds them of dad, but that’s another story) and would hurt and shame him if he lifted his thick ugly head above the barricades. Poor bugger – shamed and humiliated for ‘who he is’. But he can just suck-it-up, and watch ABC TV by himself until the strangled blood flow through his sclerotic coronaries finally stops. ABC TV will help that along.

But, to extend our homely example, let’s suppose that, before he dies, this pallid, coronary-in-waiting bigot manages to tell his newly ‘out’ bisexual daughter that she disgusts him and that she must leave home. As day follows night, she adds two more cuts and one cigarette burn to her forearm. Hurt, humiliated and injured she most certainly is. If only racial vilification were an option for this slob. Because use it, he most surely would and then we could pack him off to Commissioner Tim’s office for some counselling. Regrettably, sending his daughter on the inexorable path to becoming a writer for New Matilda is not the crime it should be.

Compensation for psychological injury does, of course, happen in other areas of the law. And everywhere it is vexed by the vagaries of psychological causality and pre-existing vulnerability. Pre-existing vulnerability is thought to explain why some people develop debilitating PTSD from trivial traumas and why some people are off work for years because of bullying that didn’t really happen – at least in the way most people understand it. For instance, if I catastrophically traumatise someone by standing on their toe, not knowing that they were dangled by their toes in the garden shed by their wicked stepmother until they were 25, no-one would suggest that my punishment should take account of my victim’s inability to return to work for the next 10 years. The pre-existing trauma was unknown to me and I hope to be judged, if judged I must be, on my instance of clumsiness only.

However, the new offence of hate-speech is only tenable if the pre-existing vulnerability is assumed to be present whether that is the case or not and whether it is known to the hate-speaker or not. The insult may be modest or slight or personally irrelevant, but that counts for nothing when the simple act of racial self-identification brings with it a cache of race memory or group hurt that makes escalating an insult to a catastrophe a fait accompli. This remedy is not available to other deserving groups. An equivalent example might be the making of a cruel remark about someone who has suffered sexual abuse: “Most people who have been sexually abused really wanted it.” For starters, it’s not hate-speech, though it certainly should be if there is any consistency in this process. However, the plaintiff in the ensuing fictional hate-speech trial is not able to claim membership of a group with an assumed, fixed, immutable collection of experiences just by self-identifying as an abused person, even though this group is likely to be at least as, and probably more, homogenous as any racial group where the matter of psychological symptoms of trauma is the issue.

This is pretty weird stuff and not an academic exercise either. The QUT 18C incident occurred in 2013 and is still unresolved. $250,000 is the price tag quoted in the papers. Some of the descriptions of the alleged hate-speech are alarmingly trivial, but that doesn’t matter because they relate to a peculiar personal characteristic that is historically privileged (in the sense of it being inextricably bound to collective vulnerability and hurt). Whom amongst us could survive 3 years of public litigation, let alone the threat of a big fine at the end of it all. And who could possible heal from a psychological injury, regardless of the cause, in these circumstances. You don’t need to be a psychiatrist to guess that in most cases it would make the clinical course much worse.

Ultimately 18C and the new-fashioned hate-speech proscriptions are cack-handed attempts to stop people speaking their minds, even if what they have to say is unpleasant. 18C is predicated on selecting a vague biological but mostly psychosocial construct called ‘race’ to privilege certain people against others. It ignores many other personal characteristics that represent collective vulnerability at least as well – older people, victims of sexual abuse to name a few. It has already demonstrated alarming weaknesses – the Bolt case, and now the QUT case.

Sadly, certain sections of the community will never agree to repeal or even modify 18C because to them it is about righting historical wrongs using individuals as pawns. They want symbolic struggles and their misplaced guilt paid for by university students.

“Oh, but there are legal tests, you privileged so and so. And don’t forget section 18D, (the ‘yes, but’ provisions). They’ll sort it all out,” is the usual retort. To that, I add but one suburban-faced sally: “No-one who thinks that the barbs of unpleasant speech can be apprehended with any fidelity has ever lived in a family, had a friend, been married, had kids or played sport. Except for politicians, for whom these same barbs are just pointy-headed opportunities”

 

Q&A panelists often complain of being ambushed by their interlocutors’ tales of woe and they are quite right to feel that way. As with any well-planned mugging, there is nowhere to flee the compulsory humiliation. The likelihood of getting off the set, reputation intact, is vanishingly slight
q&a logoABC’s Q&A is a fascinating insight into the modern social phenomenon of pathos politics. The format of the program is something like this: an audience member tells the panel of prominent lefties, various do-gooders and the odd token conservative a brief history of the most pathetic thing that has happened to them and then expects a response.

For example:

“My transsexual great-aunt Mindy was killed in a one-punch attack at the greyhounds during the Christian season of Lent. Her girlfriend was upset that they couldn’t get legally married. She fell against the rails and bits of her skull are still going round and round on the mechanical rabbit. I’ve got a symbolic taupe-coloured plastic-turd-brooch on my lapel (to camera) in case you’re interested. Now your government collects millions of dollars in revenue from gambling. How many laps of the track does poor aunt Mindy’s scalp have to do before something is done?”

Arguing by tragic personal anecdote is the last resort of the fool and/or knave. It betrays a profound ignorance of the suffering of everyday life. Most people, if they live long enough, will have a sad story to tell, even some tragic ones. However, most people are sufficiently insightful not to waste their lives with a thinly disguised attachment to the tragedy, either by becoming an advocate or, more pathetically, a mascot for the cause. There are a few pseudo-altruists who build their empires financially and psychologically, perhaps even win prizes on the suffering of their nearest and dearest. This is a complex thing, but it does have a ‘dancing on the grave’ quality to it that is not too far removed from the original meaning of that expression.

Panelists on Q&A often complain of being ambushed by their interlocutors’ tales of woe and they are quite right to feel that way. As with a mugging, there is nowhere to run from the compulsory humiliation. The likelihood of getting off the Q&A set, reputation intact, is vanishingly slight.

The potency of misery’s ridiculous raconteurs rests with their childlike urgency, their blinkered lack of context and their audacious self-absorption. There’s nothing that can really be decently said about the scalping of Aunt Mindy. Nor of Les Layabout, deadbeat dad, just wanting a few coins for the moving pictures to avoid the ritual humiliation of telling his kids, “Dad’s broke again this weekend, my sweets.”

JD Salinger’s fictional Seymour Glass (Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction) once said of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “if someone had to speak at the anniversary of the event, he should simply have come forward and shaken his fist at his audience and then walked off — that is, if the speaker was an absolutely honest man.”

More’s the pity Salinger will never appear on Q&A. But his notorious reclusiveness notwithstanding, he would have found the format quite odious. An ABC audience that comes for conservative blood would not have understood a symbolic stand against the simulacra of victimhood and preening. He in turn would not have understood why they lean forward in their seats in hope that some privileged buffoon will offend one of the totems of leftist piety.

Recently, outspoken panelists Van Badham and Steve Price clashed over Eddie McGuire & Co.’s thirty seconds of tasteless repartee about drowning journalist Caroline Wilson. This exchange occurred in response to a question from a man in the audience (in the compulsory black turtleneck and jacket) who used the fourth sentence of his question, by then still a “comment”, to tell the panel that his sister was “stabbed to death…by her partner…with a meat cleaver”. This was, as revealed, a question about domestic violence and TV culture. But it was the introduction of the meat cleaver, a particularity no-one could ignore, that reduced the discussion ad absurdum. Any self-disclosure that involves a butcher’s tool tends to do this. But no matter, we have our winner for the night!

Q&A certainly has no room for the more prosaic victim who has suffered years of degrading, enervating, or psychologically paralysing abuse because any thoughtful comment about domestic violence and popular culture would be an unpardonable affront to the appalling biographical revelation, and any politeness, which is owed to all, neuters the responder.

So, with absolutely nowhere to go, farce ensued. Not another word was said about the Cluedo crime scene and for the next two weeks social media and the tabloids were abuzz with the Greek root of “hysterical” (uterus), which is what Price accused Badham of being. After that Van Badham began parading the insults and threats which came her way as proof, though pale by comparison with the meat cleaver, of how gynaecological etymology is destiny.

Badham also mentioned the “national conversation” (of course) she wanted to have (and subsequently did), seemingly oblivious to the reality that the only sensible exchange with Price would have been about how she endures the daily news and her Twitter feed without having a nervous breakdown. For his part, the conversational question would concern just how much of his tongue is left in his mouth, given the constant biting of that unfortunate organ required if a fellow is to avoid any and all humour some people might find offensive.

I think we need some honesty in that “national conversation”. And Q&A is just hysterical enough to start us off. So, let us hope for future panelists and audience members with the courage to say:

“Look, I don’t really care about that issue, Tony, so I might send this one back to the panel, perhaps someone whose public profile demands the biggest public displays of empathy….Tanya, will you take this one?”

or

“I’ll take that question, Tony, but could I just duck into makeup for some ocular saline to show how personally moved I am by those last two sentences. Just a couple of drops should be fine because I’ll have forgotten about it soon as you call drinks in the green room…is my mike on…oh, did I say I’m sorry for your loss ma’am?”

Meanwhile, we can dream of a guest who takes the fight back to the audience. A few possible responses:

“Aw boo hoo. At least you don’t have cancer.”

“I’ve had worse happen to me and I don’t bleat about it”

“Everyone else seems to get on with it. Why not you?”

“How do you propose we pay for that?”

“You could get a job like everyone else…”

“No, you don’t really pay any tax”

Think any of that is likely? Me neither.

 

 

Cardinal Pell, Prince of the Church, was replying to the endless stream of gotcha question from Gail Furness, SC, Counsel Assisting the Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. This question was about Father Peter Searson, the sadistic pederast priest and erstwhile bird murderer, who allegedly stabbed a bird with a screwdriver in front of some Victorian school children.

“Does it really matter whether the bird was dead?” replied the (clearly exasperated) learned counsel.

I wonder if time really does stand still at great moments in history? Perhaps it did for these two – Pell and Furness. For if one ever finds oneself in Rome, being asked by video-link from Australia about a priest stabbing a bird with a screwdriver, puzzling over whether the bird was, in fact, dead before the said stabbing – there can be but one explanation. One is in hell, and condemned to read aloud, and for all time, the libretto from some execrable Tim-Minchin (black eye-liner and long hair is still so shocking on a man) comic-opera. Pell must have tweaked to his role, but it was too late. He was about to become famous.

This isn’t as shocking as it sounds. Other eminent Australians have had their best moments set to music. Remember this magnum opus: Gillard’s famous Mizzojunoy (‘Misogyny’) speech set to music.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpavaM62Fgo

 

“Not now. Not Ever”

“I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by that man…not now…not ever…la la doo wop didee laa” and on it goes. Lovely stuff this.

And Rudd’s (Rudd 1 – his juvenile “Kevin 07” period) Apology speech. Would you believe this is entirely based on a one second sound grab?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg5GdR-gzkg

 

Genius. Just like a didgeridoo or something! Listen to the explanation.

Now think what maestro Minchin will do with Pell’s one-liners from the RC.

There are two standout lines and I’ve taken the liberty of starting Minchin off. Here we go:

Verse 1

Perhaps the bird was already dead (repeat)

A screwdriver through its head (repeat)

Does it really matter she said

Which one he did take to his bed (Not the bird. Not the bird)

Verse 2

It was just another sad story…(story yeah – repeat)

Really gory, Morning glory (Morning glory – repeat)

And it didn’t interest me

Sorta rhymes with incest, you see

A bit rough I know but Minchin will polish it up.

Now Pell’s no-one’s fool and he’ll have the last laugh. After all, he is a well-read man with an eye to history. Those who have been following the Commission closely will have noticed that the bird and the screwdriver story is a barely disguised reference to Oscar Wilde’s (they read him all the time in the seminary) “The Nightingale and the Rose” and, better yet, to Colleen McCullough’s “The Thorn Birds”. Pell’s no Christopher Plummer but see what he does here:

The thorn bird with the thorn in its breast, it follows an immutable law; it is driven but it knows only to impale itself and die singing. At the very instant the thorn enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come; it simply sings and sings until there is not the life left to utter another note. But we, when we put the thorns in our breasts, we know. We understand. And still we do it. Still we do it…”

Cardinal George Pell seems to be very much a man of his time. The most obvious criticism of his persona is his manifest lack of warmth, in public at least. It is hard, for instance, to believe that children would find him approachable. That’s very un-Jesus like. He is an educated man and is accused of being pompous with his use of language. He doesn’t cry, tilt his head, speak softly and pause for effect. He uses a normal speaking voice and tries to be precise. He doesn’t appear to be all that interested in soliciting the affections of his interlocutors. He appears to prefer his opinions and recollections to the fuelling of his ego from the admiration of his audience. That makes him either cold, or a man of integrity, or perhaps both.

The survivors who travelled to Rome must hate him. He looks hateable. But, in fairness to Pell, there’s nothing he can do to change that. The dynamic is charged. The survivors look daggers at him, waiting for a slip of the tongue to reveal something they must already know. Pell, for his part, appears to be in a perpetual state of withholding – words, kindness, confessions of guilt and contrition. Yet he’s said these things before, many times, and in the only way they are ever going to get. They want things he can’t give them. There are no easy words for this dilemma – so we get this sort of thing:

(tweeted) Abuse survivor Phil Nagle says Ballarat group will turn backs on George Pell leaving Hearing room “just like he has turned his back on us”.

And this:

“We are getting a bit tired of hearing what George is saying on the stand. We want to hear from someone who cares about us. George is giving us nothing. He doesn’t care, he is turning his back on us, we don’t want to meet with George at all”.

Someone who cares about them? Pell? You must be joking. Unless he’s as psychopathic as the paedophile priests, he must hate them too, or at best feel sorry for them. That’s very un-Christian but very human. Pell said that the hardest thing about the RC was reading the harrowing accounts of the victims. There’s nothing particularly special about his feelings nor, I suspect, the accounts he’s referring to. They are just harrowing. That’s all. Should he cry and blubber? For how long? What about falling to the ground?

So off to the Pope they go. Again, why? Another big daddy who doesn’t care for them? Have they learned nothing about real caring from this calamity? I hope they get their chance to see the Pope. But what could he possibly say? I hope, for their sakes, he’s nice and says “sorry” and clasps their hands or something like that. That seems to soothe religious folk. But I’m fairly certain he will never think of them again. I wonder if they’d be surprised by that? They want recognition that it’s a worldwide problem. It is. They want it to never happen again. It will. But probably not nearly as often. That’s as good as it gets. And it is good.

Perhaps they’re really looking for the Julia Gillard or Kevin Rudd sort of caring. I gather Ms Gillard is most proud of her NDIS reform and Mr Rudd of his “Apology Speech”. Pell wont do that sort of thing.

“Risdale’s offending was a sad story but it wasn’t of much interest to me,” is the most revealing quote from the RC and will forever hang like the proverbial albatross around Pell’s neck – for all the wrong reasons. Unlike the kind of hypocrisy and posturing we’re used to in public life, Pell was being honest. It’s a shame he tried to retract it later. He’s an old man and was obviously exhausted. Gillard and Rudd wouldn’t have made the same mistake. Not in a million years.

Here’s another news grab that illustrates the messiness of this sad state of affairs:

“Clergy abuse survivors, feeling increasingly angry at Cardinal Pell’s evidence, spent the day at his ‘’home’’ church, the Domus Australia and tying ribbons on the window railings.” Survivor Phil Nagle said outside the church: “If Cardinal Pell had any honour he’ll make sure these ribbons stay here and he’ll show us the courtesy of not coming here and tying one himself.”

It seems an extraordinarily mean sentiment to question the maturity of the performance-art ceremonies of ribbon tying. Because, in a sad way, these devotional acts are inescapably redolent of the arcane rituals of the Catholic Church, an organisation they must hate more than anything.

Pell shares some of the faults of his fellow clergy, at least those who were not paedophiles themselves: misplaced loyalty; complacency; ignorance, wilful or otherwise of the depths of human depravity; and delusional faith in the twin nonsenses of the redemptive power of religion and the usefulness of the talking cures.

But his greatest sin, was the belief that his responsibilities were circumscribed by vocation, hierarchy, geography, even time itself. He did not know, and in all likelihood still does not know, that once child mistreatment is mentioned, the penumbra of guilt gobbles up pretty much everybody. I think by now he must have intuited the secret formula at work. It is a part of our primitive collective unconscious, that always balances the casualties of the righteous purge against the perceived villainy of the offender. It has always been thus and there are absolutely no excuses! Except, it seems, for almost everyone else.

For instance, I think the layman is entitled to be puzzled that Counsel Assisting the RC had amassed land-fill-size volumes of meticulously researched evidence to prove, to her mind at least, that every parent, parishioner and police officer, not to mention the local Catholic Education Office knew what the local paedophile priest was up to –  therefore the Cardinal must have known more than he was letting on.

But just what on earth were these tens or hundreds of good townsfolk doing about it? Why, they proudly “ran him out of town” we were told. To another parish no less, where a whole new set of parents and canny villagers could quickly wise up and do nothing. Thank God for the wisdom of the simple folk, eh.

The basic culpability of the unmentionable ‘other’ citizens, who must surely have some role in the protection of children, is clearly too upsetting and not voter-friendly enough for the masterminds behind the RC.  The fact that the terms of reference of the RC mimic the gutless defences of its institutional quarry are never mentioned either. Sure, we can listen to paginated volumes of filth in the sacristy but don’t ask why it was “common knowledge” and mums and dads did nothing.  The RC isn’t interested. This is a ‘case study’. It’s just not their job. Sound familiar?

This is not really a criticism of decent people doing their jobs, it’s more a reminder that there is something perverse about wig-wearing lawyers (actually no wigs, and lounge suits only, please, for the gentlemen of this Commission – because survivors of institutional sexual abuse are self-evidently frightened of uniforms) interviewing a Cardinal in his robes, bowing to one another (I’ve seen no ring kissing) and pretending that chronicling the most egregious cases of psychopathic paedophilia isn’t the equivalent of trying to learn something about crime by studying serial killers. It’s about extraordinary people like m’learned friends (the goodies) examining other extraordinary people like Pell, (the baddies) to find a scapegoat for the victims. A truly monstrous scapegoat would do nicely and, for so many Australians, Pell and the men of his generation neatly fit the bill.