Among the many considerable services Tony Abbott has rendered Australia, one was to persuade the late Paul Ramsay to endow a centre to promote the study of Western Civilisation to be achieved, innocuously and with impeccable propriety, in partnership with universities.

Had this been done in my youth, it would have been applauded enthusiastically from the ABC to Fairfax and by university dons, teachers’ unions and politicians across a grateful nation .