It seems to have been my lot this past week to be defending Tony Abbott’s integrity, or at least his non-violence. This is an odd role for a journalist to play, but I console myself that as it is restricted to events, or actually non-events, of 1977, before Abbott was a politician and before I was a journalist, there is some retroactive statute of dim history which means that defending him then doesn’t mean I’m biased towards him now. Or some such.

••• 

Abbott swears he has never thrown a punch outside a boxing ring or a football field. I’m sure that’s true. God knows I used to have furious arguments with him when we were close mates as young men. This was, I fear, evidence on my part of what G.K. Chesterton called the Irish disease. This consists of the ability to find yourself 99 per cent in agreement with someone and then focus with ferocious, unforgiving intensity on the other one per cent. Abbott and I did have some genuine policy disagreements, if you can be said to have a policy at the age of 20. He was a monarchist and I was a republican. But so insistent was I in arguments that I’m sure I would have generated at least some pub-standard push and shove with a less forgiving and pacific friend. But no, our only violence was verbal.

••• 

The most intellectually problematic question I was asked about all this came from Tony Jones on Q&A. One of the weirder results of this bizarre controversy over non-events of 35 years ago is that anyone who found themselves within several kilometres of Abbott at any time in the past 30 or 40 years and who doesn’t like his politics can claim they were intimidated. It’s a grotesque and wholly rotten form of character assassination. Anyway, I was denying the whole fantastical proposition that I once restrained Abbott from violence in a pub. But wasn’t it possible, Jones asked me, that something happened in the 1970s when I was drunk that I now don’t remember. Well, really, gimme a break.

••• 

But Q&A was very enjoyable that night. We talked at length not only of Abbott, but of the Muslim riots in Sydney, and of Israel. It was a polite and civilised exchange. I don’t know whether that made it good or bad television. People seem to like shouting matches on TV. I prefer to watch a witty program that provides enough time to develop an argument. I think that makes much better TV. I have accused the ABC of quite a lot of bias against Abbott in these recent ridiculous and confected controversies. But I must pay tribute to Aunty for furnishing me, a contrarian witness for the defence, so to speak, several opportunities to put a different point of view.

Nonetheless I do think the whole Abbott imbroglio discloses a very unattractive, sectarian anti-Catholicism among many in the commanding heights of the militantly secular media. It is as if some profound social norm is breached for these folks by the very idea of a modestly conservative, practising Catholic occupying a position of national leadership. As a result, they apply grossly unfair double standards to Abbott and convict him of all sorts of thoughtcrimes without worrying about evidence (much less whether they should be enforcing sanctions for thoughtcrime anyway).

••• 

What with Abbott, the Middle East, US presidential elections and Muslim riots all in the news, I have found myself much in demand lately as a talking head on electronic media. This is all great fun and indeed a great privilege, the thought that anyone might care to listen to one’s views about this or that. But it has its slightly taxing side. One night recently Sky News, that magnificent news outfit run on a shoestring, which has so enriched Australian political dialogue, interviewed me by phone about events in Libya. In the old days, newspaper journalists used to do a lot of their work around 11 p.m., mainly in bars with politicians. Nowadays we keep more sedate hours and I am normally deep into evening slowdown by then. But TV and radio, like writing, require quite a bit of nervous energy.

••• 

Speaking of newspaper journalists and the old days, I recently had lunch with Trevor Kennedy. Trevor was the editor of the Bulletin when I joined it in late 1979. He was a great editor and the Bulletin a powerful magazine. Like all his species he had fantastic energy. One secret of being a great editor, he told me, was to get your staff to really focus on their stories, to put their heart and soul into them. A lot of the people he hired, who often didn’t have a conventional journalistic background, went on to all kinds of prominence. Among then were the much-mentioned Abbott, Bob Carr, Malcolm Turnbull, Robert Drewe, the great Sam Lipski and plenty of others. Trevor gave me my first job in journalism, and much initial guidance. I’m sure some people feel he has a lot to answer for.

••• 

My beloved Bulldogs play Souths tomorrow in an NRL semi-final. No one is a more tragic Rabbits devotee than Tom Switzer, the esteemed editor of this august journal. I sympathise with Tom in the long travail of his forlorn devotion. But the Bulldogs are the one true faith. There was an epic grandeur in their defeat of Manly, such poetry in their dispatch of Melbourne. These many decades in journalism have taught me a happy truth. It’s a Dog’s life — if you’re lucky.

Greg Sheridan is foreign editor of the Australian.