Australians used to feel pride about our capacity to laugh at ourselves. We don’t anymore.

Until recently, we loved our sunburnt country with a deep red centre. We had thick skin, a resilient national character, and wit so dry, people with red hair were affectionately called, ‘Bluey’.

But our once-resilient and vibrant culture is losing its joie de vivre.

When Jane Hume joked that she won’t join the National Party because she would have to ‘speak slower’, the Canberra Times accused her of insulting regional Australians. Tut tut.

The Guardian cringed, ‘She’s “too fond of good coffee” to join Nationals where she’d “have to talk a lot slower”.’

A few days later another headline screamed, ‘Aussies left furious after Oasis brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher mock the Australian accent during Melbourne concert.’

Aussies used to joke that social harmony is achieved by avoiding mention of sex, religion, and politics. There is now a fatwa on mentioning weight, gender, size, sexual orientation, culture, religion, age, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The culture is being engulfed by a new wave of hypersensitive social control where people are begging to be offended by innocuous little nothings.

A small but rapidly growing collection of Woke hysterics are controlling the agenda and everyone has to do cartwheels to accommodate them. The PC Woke Unit is just like the KGB, always ready to see red, but committed to eradicating RGB; they see everything else in black and white.

Anyone who tries to introduce a bit of yellow, a splash of green, some deep blue, or simply shed a ray of sunlight into the agenda will be confronted by a loud tirade of red.

The PC Woke Unit is forcing retentiveness on society and thwarting natural expression. We’re not allowed to call a spade a spade anymore. We are now obliged to filter and sugarcoat expression lest it triggers a tsunami of vitriol. Censorious thought-control has taken over from intellectual freedom. Important ideas, issues, and observations cannot be freely discussed anymore, and many solvable problems are remaining unaddressed. Most subjects of interest are now out-of-bounds.

Freedom now means nothing more than a furniture store. No one is permitted to say what they think unless they don’t think. Rules of social acceptability are being rewritten to remove most of the colour in everything. Fifty shades of grey now means 50 shades of bland. There is no room for other colours in the social and intellectual palate.

Censorship is the new black. Wokeness is the new red.

Over-reactive social totalitarianism is unsettling families, straining friendships, and butchering the comedy circuit.

Where comedy has thrived on the freedom of edgy cheekiness, we now live in the age of the broken funny bone. Jerry Seinfeld was confronted by a firestorm when he pointed out the damage wokeness is inflicting on comedy.

Where is this leaving society? People can still have private conversations in full colour but as soon as more people are brought in, most of the colour has to be removed. The only socially binding subject left is footy and alcohol with little of substance left to talk about. The one-party-state-of-mind has taken over. It’s frightening.

Equally frightening is that our culture is becoming trained to speak and think within the confines of bland tones. These anodyne shades become ever more normalised as people become familiar with them. The PC Woke Unit is successfully banning life in full colour.

If we don’t wake up soon, the PC Woke Unit will lull society into a deep hole.

Dean Frenkel is a communications analyst and writer