Australians often mistake for tradition what is only recent habit – Australia Day, say. Or the expectation that Australians hold the post of governor-general: that started in 1965. Australian career military men now seem usual; in fact, John Howard appointed the first.

The most interesting thing, then, about last week’s appointment is the fact Sam Mostyn is the first serious businessperson in the role. The attacks on her for being “woke” were obviously stupid. But it felt just as shallow for many on the left to seem so cheered by her appointment. Mostyn herself is an impressive individual, but this new precedent surely required more discussion than it has had.

Illustration: Jim Pavlidis.Credit: Jim Pavlidis

This scant debate – so typical, now – comes not directly from polarisation, but from the fact that underlies polarisation: one’s political identity determines one’s beliefs and not the other way around. Mostyn was seen as on the left; responses followed automatically.

Equally instructive were the views that some found objectionable. The country had voted No to the Indigenous Voice, therefore someone who supported it could not be governor-general. Somebody who used the term “invasion”, too.

Given the storm created by a white woman believing these things, I suppose there is a grim political calculus behind the fact an Indigenous person was not appointed, as had long been speculated. But it is worth teasing this thinking out. Is the idea that Indigenous people are now, by virtue of the Voice defeat, too controversial? That their very presence is somehow an affront to the 60 per cent of Australians who voted No?

Much like the role of racism in that defeat, this calculus will remain largely unspoken. This week I have had in mind a column written by Gabrielle Chan after the referendum. She wrote, from her small town in a rural electorate: “For all the shouting at the federal level, the silence in my town streets was deafening in this campaign. People were loath to talk about the referendum and its implications, much less discuss how they would vote, unless they were confident they were in company who may reflect their own opinions.” This, she wrote, kept things comfortable, ensuring that “no one was exposed to views they might not agree with”.

This is always a fact of social life. But it has been hard not to feel, in recent months, as though it has acquired even greater force in relation to the horrors we have witnessed in both Israel and Gaza.

Franz Kafka once wrote a short piece about Genesis. In it, he suggested that humans knew what was right and wrong. They were, however, terrified to act on that knowledge. In order to avoid having to do so, they came up with rationalisations, in order to blur their innate understanding of right and wrong, and deny to themselves what they knew.