The virtue of openness.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)

SIR: I am little surprised at Roger Sandall's display of moral panic (January-February 2007) and more particularly when he asks rhetorically if the "mad mufti", Sheik Taj al-din al Hilaly, was right about all the "exposed meat" running around half-dressed in our society.

Isn't there a small chance that he is confusing actual moral conduct with the impressions given of it by a liberal media and the arts world in general?

I have just spent these summer holidays celebrating our Australian way of life at the beach, which includes a plentiful display of exposed meat--fat, skinny, ugly, beautiful, young and old--and the touching public intimacy of families bathing together in a very physical outdoor ritual where, importantly, no one gives a toss, except of course for people like Sheik Hilaly. This, to my mind, is Australia at ease with itself.

Contrast this with the moral order associated with people like the Sheik--the flogging of women for showing an ankle, the whipping of adulterers, and the complete banishment of women from the public gaze. The "mad Sheik's" moral universe suddenly seems less appealing.

It is true that our media is saturated with sex (tasteless, tiring and very tacky I agree) and that it is preoccupied with paedophilia, predatory teachers, sexual harassment and, just now, our home-grown Invasion of the Upskirting Bandits. However, in an open democracy, we talk about these things and, more importantly, we do something about them. Victims in this climate find it easier to come forward and to be believed, unlike just two or three decades ago in Australia where gross abuse of children in orphanages, the occasional over-friendly teacher, priest or uncle, or indeed Geoff Clark, had free rein. We now have mandatory reporting by professionals of child abuse, exceptional extra-territorial laws against under-age sex by Australian citizens in foreign countries, and open pursuit of public figures, including a bishop or two, who turn out to be rapist thugs, regardless of their authority or social standing.

In most closed societies, with their "custodians of civil order and decency" these things ...