What an eccentric case the Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane mounted against the federal government’s proposal to amend section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act — the ‘Andrew Bolt clause’ — which makes it unlawful to offend someone. If adopted, the Commissioner concluded with a dramatic flourish, the amendment ‘may license racial hatred… may condone hate speech… may unleash a darker, even violent side of our humanity.’ As it happens, on the same day the press reported the Commissioner’s case against reform of 18C, it also published a case for its reform by Michael Sexton, the NSW Solicitor-General since 1998. ‘The right response to speech that one finds offensive,’ he wrote, ‘is one’s own speech, not suppression.’ He quoted the American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes: ‘We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions we loathe.’

Frank Lowy, businessman and philanthropist, founded the Lowy Institute for International Policy in 2003 (with, it was reported, a gift of $30 million to kick it off.) Although he serves on the Institute’s board, he rarely joins in the discussions at its more or less public meetings. But he did, to great effect, the other day. The occasion was a talk by Richard Haass, president of the American think-tank, the Council on Foreign Relations. His theme was the current challenges to the global order, 25 years after the Berlin Wall came down. Haass listed several emerging ‘patterns’, from the decline of Europe to the rise of Asia and Africa. But at question time, Lowy asked him why he had not mentioned Russia. Not so long ago it was the major adversary of the United States. Has it diminished so much so soon? If it has, how come it is making so much noise in the world? In reply, Haass was cautious. Yes, Russia is diminished. Its military power is reduced. It still has significant regional influence but its global reach is limited. It will not be one of the ‘determining drivers’ of the 21st century. In any case Putin’s hands are full domestically. He does not want to end up like President Yanukovych of Ukraine. Haass did not mention Putin’s ideological drive to lead the world’s moral conservatives, especially his campaign against gay rights and same-sex marriage which has been acclaimed not only in Orthodox and Muslim countries but also in America by conservatives such as Pat Buchanan. Is this really a bid for some sort of world leadership or is it merely a ploy to distract attention from, for example, entrenched corruption in Russia? Not as current an issue as Ukraine, but a pity it was not discussed at all.

Journalists are lazy. That is the explanation that the award-winning Israeli journalist Ehud Ha’ari gives for the poor Australian reporting from the Middle East. Speaking at the Sydney Institute, he was referring to the ABC’s infamous Four Corners ‘story’ about how Israeli soldiers routinely torture stone-throwing Palestinian children. They lock them in outdoor cages and leave them in the snow over night. They crucify them. They inflict electric shocks. The point, according to Ehud Ha’ari, is that it is far easier for lazy reporters to take ridiculous hand-outs from Palestinian or Israeli disinformers than to report first-hand on terrorists. The Four Corners report from the West Bank was, he said, ‘a joke’.

In the years before the second world war, Australian schools taught a version of history similar to that parodied in 1066 and All That. Australian self-government was a chapter of British history. It began in Anglo-Saxon England in the parliamentary Witan which even the Norman conquest could not suppress. It rolled down through the centuries past Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution to its apotheosis in Spring Street, Melbourne or Macquarie Street, Sydney. Its less amusing but more scholarly critics, then and later, mocked it as the Whig Interpretation of History. They gradually substituted the now triumphant Black Armband history of Australia as a shameful story for which we must all apologise.

But there has lately been something of a backlash or revival of the old idea. Take the English MEP and Euro-sceptic Daniel Hannan who has just finished touring Australia to promote his new book, How We Invented Freedom and Why it Matters. He acknowledges the limitations of the Whig Interpretation of History ‘but these should not detract from its verities’ including the English origins of that cluster of principles — the rule of law, trial by jury, parliamentary self-government, the elevation of the individual over the state, freedom of speech — that we claim as our birthright. But Hannan has a deeper purpose than to rehabilitate English history. He is above all an advocate of the Anglosphere, a fellow campaigner alongside, for example, Claudio Véliz. By Anglosphere he means nothing so rigid as a supranational government or a common currency or joint institutions. He only wants to strengthen the affinity that already exists between most English-speaking countries. He would go no further than a tariff-free zone, some free movement of labour and flexible military alliances. His Anglosphere includes not only Singapore and the democratic Caribbean states but above all India. Prime Minister Abbott told him there should be a better word than ‘Anglosphere’. Its meaning is too easily twisted or misunderstood. Hannan responded: any suggestions?

There are only two continents that are not making economic progress, said Daniel Hannan MEP. They are Europe and Antarctica. A French friend sent him an indignant reply. Antarctica, he insisted, is doing very well!