In his eloquent ‘Closing the Gap’ speech Tony Abbott’s call to all Australians ‘to open their hearts’ to Aborigines was far more effective than Paul Keating in his Redfern speech with his characteristic contempt for Australians. (‘We brought the diseases. We committed the murders. We took children from their mothers.’) At this rate Abbott may even pull off his proposed change to the Constitution.

The paradox of Bettina Arndt is that the writer of such best-sellers as The Sex Diaries or What Men Want in Bed is also a political conservative, scourge of radical feminism and defender of traditional marriage — as was apparent again at last week’s forum on child abuse at the Centre of Independent Studies. One clue to the paradox may be found in her father, the economist Heinz Arndt, and mother Ruth. Both were children of Weimar Germany, that tempestuous, free-thinking, brilliant and ambiguous interlude between the Kaiser and Hitler. They came to Australia in 1946. There is a strong streak of Weimar in Bettina Arndt.

In her thirties she devoted herself to editing Forum, the sexual advice magazine founded and funded by the late Clyde Packer MLC. It folded in 1981, but soon afterwards she launched herself into the defence of traditional marriage as a key to the good life and the traditional family as the best institution for bringing up children. (The ABC’s Media Watch mindlessly presented this as her move from Madame Raunch to Miss Prim.) Throughout the following years she wrote newspaper columns and books, mocked the feminists, served on government committees, joined the lecture circuit (from free to $3,000 a time) and most recently became an internet dating coach ($100 an hour). This last career move happened by accident. Her marriage of 20 years ended in divorce when she was 57. She decided to give internet dating a go. Although she knows she attracts nutters, it helped her find new friends and good romances. But internet daters, so often slow and hesitant starters, usually need coaches to help them write their profiles and develop the early contacts. There was an obvious opening for Arndt, lively writer untrammelled by the fads of ageing feminists and with a jeweller’s eye for a phony. Coaching now takes up most of her time. She brushes aside critics who claim internet dating tries to plan the unplannable. She says it works.

Her continuing defence of traditional marriage still draws the crabs. Some she easily brushes aside, like Catherine Deveny who the other day labelled her ‘a sex therapist turned lunatic.’ But others, like the crack interviewer David Leser who presented her in Australian Women’s Weekly as a sex freak, have obviously hurt her. (His story in October 2010 began: ‘Let’s not be too prudish about this. Bettina Arndt always loved penises…’) She cautions people against letting Leser interview them. He lives, she notes, in Byron Bay.

Few publishers seem able to comprehend her, let alone publish her. The free enterprise Centre for Independent Studies has no such problem and again gave her a platform at its recent seminar on ‘Fractured Families. The Cost of Not Talking About Children and Marriage’. The underlying idea was that it is all very well having official inquiries into traditionally hushed-up child abuse within institutions ranging from the Boy Scouts to the Catholic Church. The real silence, the real scandal, is that so much child abuse occurs within families, especially broken families, notably of girls by ‘stepfathers’, that is, the married or casual partners of divorced or single mothers. The problem is to convince the public, or at least the media and academia. But when Patrick Parkinson, one of the speakers at the CIS forum, published a report on these themes for the Australian Christian Lobby, they almost totally ignored it. The only viable solution, Parkinson said, is to restore the traditional family. But how do you do that in a culture where the elite rejects tradition and the churches are silent? (‘I have yet to hear a sermon on these issues.’) Another speaker, Jeremy Sammut, author of the CIS report ‘The New Silence’, called for a public education campaign to end ‘the silence’ by promoting ‘a pro-responsibility, pro-marriage and pro-child message’. Arndt, the third speaker, reminded the forum of Bob Hawke’s promise that no child would live in poverty when he became prime minister. He failed in this ambition because did not foresee the breakdown of traditional marriage and the huge growth of ‘ex-nuptial’ children — a principal cause of children living in poverty. Julia Gillard made matters worse. She set a dreadful example by shacking up in the prime ministerial residence with her unmarried partner. Summing up the forum, Nick Cater of The Lucky Culture wanted the churches to become judgmental again. It is a curious episode in our history when the champion of Christian values is not the Church but a secular think-tank.

Barry Humphries has just celebrated his 80th birthday during his ‘farewell’ tour of Britain. The tour began when he packed the London Palladium (2,286 seats) for several weeks. He is now packing theatres all over Britain — with a one-day break for his birthday on 17 February. One critic saw Dame Edna as ‘one of the great comedy creations of all time’. With continuing success on this astonishing scale, why should Humphries be talking about ‘farewell tours? He is a genius. Time enough to stop treading the boards when he turns 100!