Yet again, Australians have been made fools of by a supposedly independent commission that we never elected, that we pay a fortune to maintain, and whose top employees and commissioners earn salaries that would make many a corporate jet-setting CEO blush with embarrassment.

This time it’s the Australian Human Rights Commission who, in a submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security inquiry, have in an act of unprecedented stupidity hit upon a leading threat to our national security: yobbos and larrikins.

Yes, as revealed by the Australian newspaper this week, ‘According to the AHRC, the manosphere and misogyny are increasingly ground zero for radicalisation and therefore violence.’ The ‘manosphere’, for those not familiar with this woke term, refers to the online world of podcasts, YouTube videos, social media ‘influencers’ and websites that are focussed on male interests and activities, and can be politically incorrect when it comes to women. Some of the material is of course disgusting and disgraceful, some of it is of questionable taste and legality, and some of it is simply what in the 1990s was referred to as ‘men behaving badly’. The giveaway is of course in the generalisation: everything from violent porn to philosophical discussions about masculinity and manhood in the modern world (such as Jordan Peterson’s insightful lectures) gets lumped into the all-embracing term of derision: the ‘manosphere’. (It goes without saying that anything vaguely featuring conservative men immediately falls under this umbrella.)

In describing the national security threat posed by the amorphous ‘manosphere’, the AHRC submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry apparently states: ‘misogyny and gender-based grievances are increasingly recognised as factors that may contribute to radicalisation among some young people’.

In other words, yobbos, larrikins, loners and thugs are the threat to, for example, the security of the Jews of Australia rather than, oh, what was that ideology again that inspired the alleged Bondi killers? Begins with an R and an I, we seem to recall.

But according to the Australian, radical Islam isn’t the focus of the AHRC’s submission on national security. Misogyny is.

So the myth gets regurgitated that there is a cohort of angry young man out there of no specific race, religion or cultural background who are intensely frustrated because they can’t get a girl and are thus instead hellbent on turning to terrorism, or that is the implication. This was the same idea that last year fuelled the nonsensical Netflix hit, Adolescence, in which a sweet young English schoolboy turns into an evil murderer simply because he’s been stood up by the girl of his fancy and has retreated in his despair to the dreaded online ‘manosphere’ where he becomes ‘radicalised’, or something like that.

Australian men are far from perfect, of course. They like a few too many beers and crack smutty jokes when out of earshot of the boss (who is probably a woman). Many Australian men struggle with custodial settlements and the after-effects of divorce. Many struggle to fit into the modern, woke workplace and choose to suppress their personality and humour for fear of reprisals. But to put this fatuous left-wing lens of ‘toxic masculinity’ onto general male behaviour and somehow link it to the most vile of crimes, terrorism, is beyond a joke.

But then again, this is the same Human Rights Commission whose Sex Discrimination Commissioner prefers to focus on men when they are lactating in order to protect their rights in the workplace. The same Human Rights Commission that is adamant that a man can ‘potentially’ get pregnant. The same Commission that a decade ago arguably contributed to the cartoonist Bill Leak’s early passing.

It is also the same Human Rights Commission seen by many as far too compliant during the Covid era of lockdowns and mandates, when Australians’ human rights, rights to freedom of expression and rights to medical freedom of choice, were trampled all over by the most authoritarian, oppressive, censorial, draconian and ugly governments this nation has ever seen. And the same Human Rights Commission that supports Labor’s Digital Duty of Care legislation and is keen to ban ‘climate misinformation and disinformation’.

The Race Discrimination Commissioner has distinguished himself in recent times, as well, with his focus on accusing everyday Aussies of harbouring a ‘deep vein of racism’ and who apparently believes such ‘racism’ is embedded in our institutions, our public debate and our historical structures. Charming.

And this is the same Human Rights Commission that felt so ill-equipped, despite its extravagant $36 million per annum funding, that it needed to splash out on ‘media consultants’ to help prepare the Commissioners to answer everyday questions from our elected representatives.

So, yes, calling the Australian Human Rights Commission ‘beyond a joke’ is letting them off far too lightly.

The Coalition and One Nation must both commit to defunding this absurd institution the day they form government.