I can’t think of a time when more people have lost their minds

Of course, it isn’t all peace and light. Question and answer sessions are perilous in any country, but more so abroad. In Auckland one young man prefaces his question by saying I inspired him to become a journalist. I am riding high. The next questioner pronounces a set of personality disorders he believes I suffer from, including ‘straight white male privilege’. In Sydney a young man at the mic thanks ‘Doug’ for coming all this way. ‘Douglas,’ I correct him. There is an intake of audience breath. ‘I know you Australians,’ I explain. ‘If I let one Doug go by you’ll all be on to Dougo next.’

It is noticeable that both Australians and New Zealanders are beginning to get nervous about their relationship with China. Locals finding it hard to get on the housing ladder and foreigners buying up property is an issue. Though where is it not? Yet it is aboriginal matters that most rumble, and sometimes threaten to explode. One evening Dr West and I are discussing the effects of the loss of the Christian substrate in our societies. I express concern over euthanasia of the mentally ill. A woman in her twenties with mental health issues has just been euthanised in Holland. This does not seem to me a positive development. During the Q&A a woman of aboriginal descent declares that she wishes that she and her people had the same ‘privilege’ I show in opposing euthanasia. Her specific point is unclear, but her larger aim is to put me in the position that chess players call ‘zugzwang’: a situation in which every potential move will only worsen my situation. Had I come out for euthanasia — let alone called for its wider deployment — then you could be sure the aboriginal woman would have found some way to use this against me. I’m willing to take some of this because I am a visitor. But I’m not sure I would feel so zen if I were an Australian being thus blackmailed.