Wow, that George Christensen is anti everything. Well of course he would be, he’s a liberal party candidate.

At least, that’s the impression you might get from this article in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Some of the comments quoted really are obnoxious. Only one of them is actually attributed to Christensen. The rest were in a magazine he edited.

All date from 1998, when he was a university student.

Sorry, when? 1998. Twelve years ago. Christensen was a teenager at the time.

There are a few things to note here. Firstly this was twelve years ago. Christensen was a teenager.

Secondly, some of the opinons expressed by Christensen as a teenager are simply sensible.

Is it really extreme, anti-gay, or anti-women to suggest there is something wrong with using tax-payer funds to pay for a sex change operation for a bloke who thinks he’d like to be a lesbian?

Thirdly, this was twelve years ago, and Christensen was a teenager at the time.

Fourthly, even the most extreme views expressed in the magazine edited by Christensen are no match for the personal attacks, obscenity and sheer nastiness exhibited on an ongoing basis by such left-wing luminaries as Marieke Hardy and Catherine Deveny, without so much as a disapproving murmur from the mainstream media.

Finally, if what you thought at university can safely be held to be what you think now, we are really in trouble with Ms Gillard, who is therefore still a ‘revolutionary leftist’ (her own words), committed to undermining capitalist society.

I feel much more confident that Christensen does not now hold the juvenile views he did twelve years ago than that Ms Gillard does not hold the radical views she did.

Christensen has acknowledged that some of what he said was inappropriate. He says those remarks were made in jest, or to generate discussion. They are not representative of his views now. And he has apologised unreservedly. 

Julia is still to tell the truth about the extent of her involvement in communist groups.

I know who I’d trust first.