“Much of the advice you received as a child is now redundant."

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Don’t even think about telling an Australian under the age of twenty that, ‘Sticks and stones will break your bones, but names can never hurt you’.

It is a maxim conceived, after all, by a generation which had fought at Kokoda and whose own parents could remember Gallipoli.

The idea that children can cause or incur serious injury by trading insults would have seemed as silly to them as the idea of wearing a helmet to ride a bicycle.

Article | https://www.spectator.com.au/2025/08/aussie-life-216/