Amanda Vanstone | The culture of victimhood is getting too much to bear

From many the reaction will be sympathetic. Decent people wishing to be appropriately civil to any who have suffered may be more forgiving of any transgressions you make than they would of others. For example, you may allowed to go over the allowed time, because after all you're a victim.

The others at the conference or on the panel are expected to acquiesce, because you're a victim. You may be able to allege the perpetration of all manner of sins against you that might go untested because it is considered unwise to challenge an alleged victim lest you be labelled a bully. Hey presto! The stage is yours, sing your song.

We are suffering a plague of victimhood. My old parliamentary colleague Chris Pyne took a masterful swipe at this hideous trend in his valedictory speech in Parliament. He acknowledged he didn't have a "poor me" or "log cabin" story to tell except, he joked, he did once have to put his own lemon in a gin and tonic. What overtakes people to imagine that their message is somehow more deserving of our attention because they feel they have suffered in the past?

Make no mistake, understanding the life experience of the people we interact with, or in a parliamentarian and bureaucratic case, the people we make policies to help, is important. But that's got nothing to do with the epidemic we are living through. There's a tsunami of victims and we are drowning in them.

I can't help but wonder what people who have quietly and stoically battled on through all kinds of adversity in their life can possibly think when they see the ugly side of this modern-day trend. Victims are the new bullies. They can be as incorrect or insulting as they like because if you challenge them, you're the thug. The megaphone warning of "I'm a victim", clears the decks for whatever the victim wants to say ... rubbish or otherwise.

White males have started to feel victims, understandably so. Perhaps now all white people can claim victimhood. It's extraordinary that so many white people should no longer be comfortable with their skin colour.

To be white skinned now means to carry the burden of guilt for whatever others did in the past. As I recall, Martin Luther King implored humanity to judge each other by the content of our character rather than the colour of our skin. The "white privilege" critical race theory is putting an end to that dream. No doubt the kids who worked in mines, or were sent to work in factories and houses felt privileged.

A young girl in my state recently remarked to her mum as they passed a building in the car. "I feel bad passing here, it's where that man yelled at us". She's 12 and her mother says that three years ago the school went there in NAIDOC week so the kids could learn more about Indigenous Australia. A good thing, most of us would say. Except the presenter was aggressive, very. Yelling at the kids asking how they'd feel if they were lined up and had their heads shaven, or endured various other indignities.

Three years later the building still spooks her. I know this kid and she's no snowflake. Did terrible things happen in the early days of settlement? Yes. Are they undone or ameliorated by making young kids today feel guilty for what happened? Hell no. What's the matter with people thinking they can better the world by upsetting kids. But hey, if you're a white kid you're privileged so suck it up.

I have some, although not complete sympathy for the teachers in charge of this excursion. I want to say "why didn't you protect the kids and ensure the presentation was toned down?" But I know that if the presenter was in full representative-of-victims mode any such attempt may have just made things worse. That kid and no doubt others will just be unwell whenever similar excursions are planned .

Condoleeza Rice, former secretary of state for the United States grew up in segregated Birmingham Alabama. She couldn't go to restaurants and movie theatres with her parents and went to segregated schools, until the family moved to Denver. She rightly speaks about not blaming white kids today for the wrongs of the past. Equally importantly she identifies the need to not disempower children of colour by referencing the past. You can see her remarks on YouTube.

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Everyone should have a mum like hers who said she had to be what she wanted. I know that some Indigenous people today are offended by the suggestion that they are in a special class that needs extra help. They see that as disempowering.

Sometime ago I attended a panel discussion at the National Museum on the lake in Canberra with Tim Soutphommasane and Yassmin Abdel-Magied. Neither are shrinking violets. Both spoke of unconscious racism they experienced because people were always asking where they or their family came from.

Seriously. No one asked my heritage when my surname was O'Brien. But changing to Vanstone led to inevitable questions about being of Dutch heritage. So what? We're an immigration country. "From all the lands on earth we come", so the song goes. Of course we are interested in where everyone else came from. But if you want to play the victim just turn friendly, neighbourly interest into racism.

Like many I'm sick and tired of media stories about Brittany Higgins but she remains a case study par excellence in weaponising alleged victimhood.

Claiming victimhood has now become so prevalent that its days might be numbered. When things are overdone, when people are pushed too far the pendulum swings back. Eventually.