So who’s the real elite?

Here's my response to a column in The Australian newspaper in February this year. It wasn't published, but I'll present it here anyway.

Let’s cease sham and name calling. Neal Brown ([The Australian] Aunty won’t be pleased, 25/2, p.15) ridicules others as café latte-drinking intelligentsia: other words for the conservatives’ bete-noir “the elites”. I reckon that an ex-Federal minister and QC, with a column in the Australian, is likely to be the real elite.

Winners seldom question themselves. But honesty, truth and rationality underlie democracy. Labor was not pure, but conservatives threaten democracy itself. “Relaxed and comfortable” is not a manifesto for an engaged citizenship; it’s a recipe for autocracy or worse.