Last year Chris Snowdon wrote an interesting article for The Free Society.
Australia – the world’s number one nanny state described how a country "once renowned for rugged individualism capitulated to puritanism with barely a whimper".
Today BBC News magazine has a feature that, unintentionally perhaps, supports Snowdon's thesis.
This isn't the whole story, of course, as Australia: What the rest of the world gets wrong clearly demonstrates. Bryant does however make this damning observation:
In the face of this authoritarianism, the supposedly anti-authoritarian Australians are unexpectedly meek and acquiescent.
This struck a chord because less than a week ago I exchanged emails with a journalist in Ireland who told me, without prompting:
We Irish talk a great talk about being rebels, but this country is incredibly conformist. It's actually shocking how disconnected our self-image is from reality.
I'm sure a thesis could be written about this. Any volunteers?