For more than twenty years, Bruce Ruxton was Victorian president of the RSL, and one of the best-known names in Australia. ‘Best-known’ does not necessarily mean ‘best-loved’; few public figures cut so clear a chasm between supporters and detractors. Knowing Ruxton well over many years, let me declare that on the day I meet another man who equals him for kindness of heart and dedication to the welfare of others, I’ll take my hat off to the second man, too.

Ruxton’s opponents cannot all be simply lumped together as a politically correct commentariat of the chattering classes. They include many who are ‘civilized and kind’, with moral values that may well weigh heavier than mine in the scales of heavenly arbitration. Alas! Living in an earthly democracy, there can be no ignoring the mindset of the mass of our fellow citizens. In recent public life, John Howard, the late B.A. Santamaria and Bruce Ruxton all share an effortless talent to reduce liberal bien pensants to foam-flecked indignation. Yet often, when the argument (whatever it might be) is submitted to public judgment, the views of the three enfants terribles will unaccountably prevail: the republic and the national flag; state aid to church schools; multi­culturalism; Aboriginal separatism.