Claire Lehmann: belief

Transcript context

…You don’t have political correctness, and the intellectual power center has turned out to be further to the left. Does that mean political correctness isn’t that important after all? I think there’s a difference between political correctness and being left-wing. I think one can be left-wing and not be politically correct. In Australia, to be left-wing simply means to favor more redistributive policies, and to favor egalitarianism, basically. We have a strong history of egalitarianism in our culture, and there are lots of left-wing people in Australia who are not politically correct in our characters in films and TV shows. If you think of someone like Crocodile Dundee, he’s not politically correct, but he’s not right-wing. He’s just an Aussie bloke who goes out into the bush and fights with crocodiles. There’s not this dichotomy where, if you’re anti-PC, you must be right-wing. We don’t really have that black-and-white kind of setup. There’s a cliché about Australia, or maybe an earlier Australia if not today, that it is in some ways more sexually chauvinist than some of the other Anglo countries. You mentioned Crocodile Dundee. Mel Gibson—not entirely Australian. Robert Hughes. There seems to be this tradition of gruff, very manly type figures. Is that part of Australian culture? And is it still there?…

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