I have found myself sitting in gutters a number of times in my counselling psychology career. There is some kind of irony in that, given one of my grandfathers apparently died in a gutter from his drunkenness (it happened before I was born). But this ancestral history did not deter me from voluntarily going to those places to be with young people who were in distress.

The first two occasions stay strong in my memory. They were both run-away contexts, but for very different reasons. The first was a young teenage girl whose distraught mother rang me on a winter’s evening. My wife cautioned me about my cold that I had at the time, but I had a hunch where I might find this young person, and so took the risk. I eventually found myself in the drizzling rain in a gutter next to a bus stop.

The second occasion was in a school, where a distressed teacher reported that a largish student had physically attacked him, and then ran off. A short time later, after jogging the area, I again found myself in a gutter sitting next to a big, sobbing young person.

The teenage girl was distressed about her loss of relationship with her wealthy but absent father. The teenage boy was angry about his life situation, and had taken it out on his teacher. The first one I managed to invite home to the love of her mother while she rehearsed what she needed to say to her father. The second I invited to see who actually did accept and care for him, and rehearsed with him what he might say to his parents and the Police, who had been called after the attack. Both were in pain. Both faced a moment when they would either amplify that pain, or start to express it honestly, respectfully, and in a way that recognised what help was available.

I have reflected that this kind of support needs a working mix of helping someone while doing what was right. There is no helping someone if we don’t know what help looks like. Without a frame of reference, we live in an impossibly competitive world of safetyism and self-centred emotional orientations.

This is why many of our political leaders speak words of care, but cannot put it into practice. They no longer know what ‘helping someone’ actually looks like. That is why so much of what is spoken about Alice Springs is like breath on a cold morning – you can see it for a moment, but then it goes. The confusion about how to help in places like the Alice is because we have enculturated the seductive lie of absolute cultural relativism – the one that says, ‘You can never allow a person of one culture to critique another culture.’ This is regressive, not progressive, because this means we can never seek to find the ‘best wherever it is found’ and avoid the worst, from all places.

Even that last statement is bound in understanding our combined cultural histories. It takes a particular lens to see that humanity as a whole can make choices above our instincts that lead to more or less justice and care for all people. Such a way of viewing life conflicts with those who promote ultimate relativist multiculturalism. It is the conundrum in which many of our political leaders find themselves. How can they say, ‘Yes, we will help,’ yet prevaricate on what help looks like?

Greg Sheridan clearly explained this dynamic – of developing a better understanding of humanity across time and cultures – in his paper for the IPA about the proposed addition to our Constitution, by referring to Larry Siedentop’s work:

Siedentop argues the striking case that most of the things we like about liberalism had been thought through by the late Middle Ages. But his larger thesis is that liberalism derives from the working through of the Jewish and Christian traditions. Not the repudiation of these traditions but the working through of these traditions.

But if you are working to help someone and actually do repudiate these traditions – for example, that all children deserve safety regardless of their social status and heritage – then your ability to help is severely compromised if not nullified. Leaders find themselves saying, ‘We care!’ but then act in inconsistent ways of stepping in when children are being abused. Similarly, they declare that, ‘We want to keep you safe…’ to those subject to violence in townships, but cannot bring themselves to administer justice for fear of being accused of racism. Thus, they are restricted in their efforts to care because they genuinely do not know what is right.

This can be called ‘compromised commitment’. It can be seen in many aspects of Australian life. Leaders can say, ‘We are supportive of the family!’ but then do nothing in tax structures to encourage parents to spend more time with their children. They can say, ‘We are for freedom of speech and association!’ but then legislate against parents and teachers having any say over critical issues of identity and belonging. Increasingly parents are given responsibility with diminished authority. That does not work, it has never worked, and such thinking will continue to feed the cycle of familial disaster in both our remote communities and confused suburbs.

Of course, one of the most obvious current examples of this incoherency is what many laugh about, but it is outrageous in its spirit. It is those who say, ‘We support women’ but who then will not define ‘woman’. Some decry such ‘word games’ as frivolous. Others say it is political point scoring. But this is convenient spin. Our language is one of the deepest expressions of our humanity. Words reflect our understanding of reality – both the seen and unseen aspects of reality. And most devastatingly, words reflect what is on our hearts. If a man cannot bring himself to define ‘woman’, he is ambivalent in his heart on what is good for woman. He cannot be trusted. If a man or woman cannot explain why all children should be protected from abuse, they are ambivalent in their hearts, and cannot be trusted nor expected to have the courage they need to make a difference.

So, for the most part, we can expect more of the same. We live in a cycle of predictable failure of reform, because we will not speak that which is on our hearts at a level that transcends race, sex, or political manoeuvring. Universal respect is not a ‘self-evident truth’. Unless we find where we stand on such things (even on the centre-right of politics), we will say we care, but we will not.