Diary – 21 March 2013

I learned on Wednesday that a row is exploding over freedom of the press … in Australia. Surely some mistake. Australia is refreshingly open and its newspapers are free to say, often rudely, whatever they like. In fact, they are among the world’s the most tightly regulated, standing 26th and 29th respectively in the Reporters Without Borders censorship index — way behind Jamaica, Costa Rica and Namibia. Where, I wonder, will Britain stand after the events of this week?

Much has changed in Oz since I spent my first day there as a Ten Pound Pom, looking comical in a grey suit on Bondi beach in midsummer, almost half a century ago. I left a stagnant Britain, beset by industrial strife and a Tory government whose only plan was to manage our decline. I returned in 1978, in time for the winter of discontent, with union-dominated Labour apparently determined to finish the job.