World goes mad and we are not immune, by Greg Sheridan.
[W]hat on earth is this jihad against poor old Wyatt Roy about? Finally a politician makes an effort to acquire serious strategic knowledge about the conflict in Iraq and all he gets is abuse. … No one, including former politicians, is legally or even ethically obliged to follow official Australian advice. … If he were a journalist we would be nominating him for an award. … The community reaction, of everyone kicking Roy as the designated villain of the week, reflects poorly on our political culture. …
Kevin Rudd’s unkillable bid to be secretary-general of the UN … The Turnbull government decided not to nominate him. … It turns out another country has offered to nominate Rudd. … Surely this is a diplomatic first …
The third sign of our energetic participation in the global madness is the vicious, ugly protest at the University of Sydney against an honorary doctorate for John Howard. … When I was an undergraduate at Sydney University back in the 1970s, a sizeable number of its academics supported Pol Pot, Mao Zedong and every other communist dictator. That made them all fellows in good standing in the university community. But a democratic giant like Howard — who won four elections perfectly peacefully, and lost two perfectly peacefully, and who has written two splendid books — is somehow or the other profoundly offensive to the newly authoritarian and deeply illiberal atmosphere dominant on our campuses. The truly mad element here is that this is the new atmosphere of our campuses in repose. Previously they became deeply intolerant during some political crisis, such as the Vietnam War. Now they are intolerant all the time.
And finally, South Australia, truly the Athens of the south. SA shows that, like Greece, economic misfortune will not drive it to good policy. A state with chronic unemployment, disinvestment and deindustrialisation is determined to have the most expensive and unreliable source of power in Australia, if not the Western world, providing maximum disincentive to any investment other than a socialist enterprise backed by the Australian taxpayer. This is what you get from modern centre-left governments — identity politics, green gestures, economic failure.
