A few weeks ago, England women’s cricket captain Heather Knight was forced to apologise after a decade old social media post turned up of her attending an end-of-season fancy dress party in blackface.

Knight, who is now 33, was charged with bringing the game into disrepute as a 21-year-old at a cricket club party in Kent, and copped a heavy suspended fine – despite the cricket regulator finding there was “no racist intent in her conduct’’.

Different times. Different context.

This week, a young Labor candidate for Burleigh on Queensland’s Gold Coast, Claire Carlin, was lambasted after social media posts – one of them 15 years old – popped up, attacking police.

“We don’t like police coz they kick and they punch,” the 2009 post read.

Did Carlin hate police? Or was it a reference to a line from a song delivered by a British rapper in 2008, the previous year? And does it really matter?

At what point is there a statute of limitations on our earlier opinions? Or the silly behaviour that envelops most of our........

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