Can we ban the term ''un-Australian''? At the very least, I'd like to see hefty legislative controls. For example: an ''un-Australian'' licence in which people would pre-commit to how many times they intend using the phrase ''un-Australian'' in any one political argument.

As with gambling, pre-commitment is so important. We all know how common sense can depart after a few drinks. There you are, out with friends, planning to have a quiet discussion about climate change or Wayne Swan's hair and within a couple of hours you find yourselves repeatedly screaming ''that's un-Australian'' at each other while being circled by security guards.

This is why we need swift legislative action.

My draft legislation - A bill to restrict use of the phrase ''un-Australian'' - lays out the limited circumstances in which an ordinary citizen may employ the term ''un-Australian'' without fear of fines or imprisonment.

Un-Australian

and while we're at it .....

You only ever get two stories written about the Australian Defence Force. It's heroes or villains.

In story one, our uniformed warriors are the flower of Australian youth, worthy heirs to the Anzac legend, valiantly defending the nation on the frontiers of freedom. Story two is that they are a rabble of booze and drug-addled brutes, misogynist and homophobic, commanded by boneheads.

You can't have it both ways, although we try very hard to. Media coverage of the Skype scandal at the Australian Defence Force Academy has been story two stuff. A lot was just plain wrong. Shock horror from 30 years ago was reheated. Lurid exaggerations were whipped up by ''commentators'' who have never heard a shot fired in anger. Although not in this newspaper, I am happy to say.

Bizarrely, those bellowing most loudly about brutal treatment of women in the ADF were the same blowhards who were savaging Brigadier Lyn McDade, the director of military prosecutions, for her girlie decision last year to charge three commandos for misconduct in Afghanistan. ''This woman,'' as Alan Jones constantly called her. ''No one knows how she became a brigadier.''

I have spent a week talking to my contacts in the ADF. Some facts might be useful.

Kate, the RAAF cadet, was no doe-eyed innocent. She had already been charged with being AWOL and drinking offences, and she knew sex between students was forbidden.

There is no longer a subculture of sexual bullying at the academy, nor a blokey conspiracy of silence. The gormless teenage oafs who tormented Kate had been there barely 10 weeks. Her ordeal was reported by a male cadet.

The academy commandant, Commodore Bruce Kafer, immediately called the Australian Federal Police. He did not order Kate to apologise to her fellow cadets for going public on the affair.

The decision to discipline Kate for her other offences was already in the pipeline when the Skype incident arose. It was not payback by the top brass. She would probably have copped a two- or three-week grounding on campus.

Kate was not suspended from the academy. She was given compassionate leave to be with her family. She will be welcomed back if she chooses to return.

The male cadets involved remain at the academy while the police question them because this is more convenient than sending them home around the country.

The Defence Force head, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, did not threaten to resign if Kafer was sacked.

These facts could have been out in public from day one if the ADF's media operation actually worked. It doesn't, because it's not allowed to. All control has been increasingly centred in the minister's office since that former Liberal grandee Peter Reith so deceitfully concocted the children overboard affair. Reith's know-all pontificating on the Skype scandal is seen by many in defence as richly ironic, to say the least. These days, if you were to ring defence to ask who won the First World War it would take the Canberra desk jockeys three weeks to find, approve and supply the answer.

The hounding of Kafer has been cruelly unfair. Stephen Smith was understandably furious with Kate's abusers, but in publicly berating Kafer for what was, at worst, a minor misjudgment, he was taking the bolt cutters to the chain of command. That crossed a line. Military officers deeply resent the humiliation. Smith was ''just like Reith'', one senior officer told me.

A family man with two sons, Kafer is seen in the navy as a good bloke and highly competent, a straight arrow officer. He has commanded international naval task forces in the Persian Gulf and been awarded a medal in the Order of Australia and the Conspicuous Service Cross, which is not handed out lightly. I am told he is also highly regarded at the academy by the cadets and staff. He deserved better than the scapegoating he got.

The supreme tragedy of this business is that we are ignoring the elephant in the room. The abuse of women is not unique to the ADF. It is rampant wherever young men gather.

We are wearily familiar with attitudes to women in the NRL and the AFL. But it's not just footballers, either. At Sydney University, the elite and all-male St Paul's residential college has long been notorious for a culture that degrades women. Rape, assault and harassment have been reported there even in recent years. Last year Paul's students wrote a song for a college revue: Always Look on the Bright Side of Rape.

One group set up a ''Pro-Rape'' page on Facebook. Most horrifying of all, a new survey by the National Union of Students suggests sexual assault is endemic on Australian campuses. Of 1549 female students who responded, 67 per cent said they had had ''an unwanted sexual experience''.

A staggering 17 per cent said they had been raped, and another 11 per cent said they had been ''sexually assaulted by penetration''.

There ought to be national outrage at this. We have a generation where too many young men think binge drinking and contemptuous brutality towards women is just another terrific night out.

Mike Carlton