Schultz’s astringent work is leavened by storytelling and encounters with people. An example is her relationship with the town of Cunnamulla, 800 kilometres west of Brisbane. She visited as a journalist in 1977, horrified by the segregation of the community and the anger towards Indigenous people whose lives were truly appalling. A taxi driver tells her “I just want a fair go for the white fella” as he takes her on a tour of the so-called black camps. At the same time, she encounters a community worker called Hazel McKellar whose “advocacy for including cultural knowledge was ahead of the zeitgeist”. By 2021, the sign at the entrance of Cunnamulla declared “settled in the dreamtime”. At least official attitudes were shifting.

This book is rich in humanity. It wears its heart on its sleeve as it portrays one figure after another with warmth and admiration: Alexis Wright, Mary Gilmore and Oodgeroo Noonuccal are among them. Individuals such as Pauline Hanson and Rupert Murdoch are much less appealing to Schultz but her detailed portrayal of them reveals more understanding than contempt.

Murdoch spoke out in 2021 against “this awful woke orthodoxy”. He brazenly criticised “a wave of censorship that seeks to silence conversation”, an idea he seems to support when it suits him. Schultz calls him out yet, at the same time, was in close enough proximity to his media empire to offer a somewhat nuanced account of its wellsprings.

Schultz is a masterful creator of short biographies. One of the best is of Yassmin Abdel-Magied, whom Schultz first met when she was a student of engineering at the University of Queensland. On Anzac Day in 2017, Yassmin, who often went to the shrine of remembrance to pay her respects, posted a few words asking people not to forget “Manus, Nauru, Syria and Palestine”. She removed the post an hour later.

Over the weeks that followed, however, she was buried alive under an hysterical reaction. Yes, of course it may have been wiser to leave Anzac Day to its central purpose. But this does not explain the ferocity of the response. It was almost as if commentators enjoyed the post for the simple reason that it provided them with a pretext to abuse a young woman in a hijab. Yassmin had worn a headscarf since she was 10, despite her parents expressing concerns. Her family had fled from Sudan and Yassmin had already made her mark, becoming the young Queenslander of the Year. Why did a single message unleash such a vitriolic storm? Schultz is at a loss to find the right word for this kind of dark behaviour.

Many of the issues in The Idea of Australia are uncomfortable, all the more so because of their resilience in the face of opportunities to do better. There are snakes in the undergrowth of Australian history that refuse to die. Although Schultz has many trenchant criticisms, not to mention a long memory, there is not a shred of cynicism in this book. It is long on disappointments. But it is not without hope. It wants to find both the language and social structures that would tell a different story.

Julianne Schultz is a guest at Sydney Writers’ Festival. swf.org.au

Michael McGirr’s latest book is Ideas to Save Your Life (Text).