As governor general, Sam Mostyn has set herself a clear mission – to foster a culture of kindness, care and compassion in Australia. It is her mantra, she says it over and over, and clearly believes it is not only desirable, but possible.

A way of demonstrating Australian values to the world.

The contrast between her heartwarming talk and the brutal language of politics could not be sharper.

It is one thing for those on the fringes to demonise others – fostering fear, envy and anger are their stock in trade. Now a new opposition leader needs to make his mark. Predictably, he immediately suggested more punitive laws.

The urge to punish lies just below the surface in this former penal colony.

The prime minister, who urges everyone else to turn the temperature down, instead joined the pile on to say of the women and children held in the al-Roj camp in Syria by saying he had “nothing but contempt for these people.”

The governor general’s mission might be Sisyphean.

Contempt and kindness are impossible bedfellows.

Over the past 10 days we have seen politicians competing with each other to raise the level of outrage about, and punishment of, a small group of Australian citizens who find themselves trapped in an impossible situation, the product of bad choices, coercion and foolishness.

We may as well give up if we believe that people are incapable of change, and that children must endlessly pay for the sins of their parents.

Empathy has been under attack in Australia for a long time.

The capacity to rehabilitate is an important part of the former penal colony’s foundation story – it is part of what made modern Australia.

Now as one of the richest nations on Earth, with well developed laws and institutions, working with these 34 people to ensure their successful reintegration should not be beyond us. Dr Jamal Rifi, a Sydney GP who has set himself the task of seeing these Australian citizens returned home, reports that the families who have already made the journey back from Syria have done so successfully.

Meanwhile the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has set itself the task of rebuilding empathy.

Empathy has been under attack in Australia for a long time. Some would say that for all the nostalgic talk of mateship, it has only rarely been a national characteristic.

This year is the 25th anniversary of the Tampa affair, which irrevocably politicised the plight of refugees, wrong-footed Labor and delivered John Howard another six years in office. The audio of the former prime minister wrongly declaring that the Kurdish and Hazari refugees seeking safe haven were throwing their children overboard, that these were not the sort of people we would want in Australia, has already begun to be rebroadcast. It is likely to echo all year.

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This year should have been a time for reckoning, to reflect on the inhumanity that was unleashed with that politically calculated outburst, but it is shaping up as one that will entrench it.

One of the key tools in the demonisation of refugees that has been part of the political metier this century, has been to make the human stories invisible, to turn people into numbers. This was largely successful. When the human stories became known the political cost rose, most notably the Murugappan family who after years in detention were eventually allowed to return to Biloela.

Now we are hearing the stories of the children in the Syrian camp, little kids with names and faces, people who have known no life outside a grim refugee camp. The joy in childish voices describing seeing animals – donkeys, cows and sheep – for the first time on the ill-fated journey towards Damascus would touch the hardest heart.

The girl who dreams of going on Australia’s Got Talent to sing the songs from Frozen that she has practised for years in her dusty tent home.

Little Australian children who have watched Bluey from afar and conjured a magical land where parents are kind and funny and suburban adventures await.

When Julian Assange was finally released, Anthony Albanese defined his job as being “to advocate for Australian citizens”.

What makes the prime minister’s recent language so repugnant, when he frames their plight in terms of contempt, is that he is talking about Australian citizens, and the children of people who undoubtedly made a bad decision and may have broken the law. People with names and passports, and families who embody the diversity that in another context he would celebrate as a characteristic of “the greatest country on Earth”.

Clearly not all are equal.

If empathy is the goal, as Richard Lancaster SC, counsel assisting the royal commission, has declared, it cannot be partial. Empathy does not preclude punishment for wrongs, but it provides a tool to help ensure mistakes are not repeated.

Those who know the prime minister well say that personally he is an empathetic person, but all too often his public language masks this, like someone trying to prove how tough he can be, eager to please a febrile crowd, as calling Grace Tame “difficult” graphically illustrated.

The governor general has some tips on how to extend a culture of kindness and compassion, and they are lessons worth learning.

As if to prove his compassion in the same interview where he said that the government could do nothing for the children of people who had made bad decisions, the prime minister patted himself on the back for banning social media, saying “we want kids to have their childhood back”.

Now that’s an Australian value to aspire to.

Julianne Schultz is the author of The Idea of Australia

Julianne Schultz is the author of The Idea of Australia

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