When I left Australia in February, the commentariat war had shifted. Progressives were finally using their heads – not their hearts – to satirise the absurd claims of the neo-conservatives that we, not they, were “the elite”. On my return, the winners appear to have finally dropped ‘elite’ from their arsenal of abusive labels. Perhaps even they thought it too ridiculous.

After Howard’s six years in power, and another term, it is easy to pick the elites, and the losers in the cultural war over our social values aren’t on the radar. It’s over. The other side won.

There also seems to be a growing adoption of the “bleeding heart” label as a badge of honour. I first saw this just before I left, when Carmen Lawrence, in an article condemning the detention of women and children in refugee detention centres, declared herself proud to be a bleeding heart. Paul Keating’s speech writer Don Watson has titled his impending memoir “Recollections of a bleeding heart”.

To me, this signifies that social progressives have, at last, conceded that they are a tiny minority of the Australian people. They have left behind their anguish, shame and breast-beating and their refusal to accept that their concept of the Australian identity is not mainstream. And so they have begun to transform the abusive “bleeding heart” label into something to glory in, just as Italian migrants did with ‘wog’ and gays did with ‘queer”.

And just as women, gays and migrants did before them, ‘bleeding hearts’ are beginning to understand that to influence power and change attitudes they need to understand the dominant discourse and engage with it, and they need to use the legal system to press their case. They need protests and stunts to earn publicity. They need concerts like the one in Sydney this Sunday to make people feel that there are others like them, that they belong, and that together they have the energy, commitment and intelligence to make a difference.

They need to understand the enemy. They must be willing to put time and effort into their cause, and to realise that it is a long-term project. Since I’ve been away, refugee groups seem to have mushroomed, encompassing front-line, confrontational activism like the attack on Woomera, rural refugee groups, artists for refugees and the spare rooms movement. No matter their age, political beliefs and ethical boundaries, there is a place for all bleeding hearts in the movement. Phillip Adams mentioned today that he had received $250,000 in donations to help further the refugee cause. He and others have set up a board to dispense cash to groups which need them.

We are now in the decadent phase of the new political correctness. By the end of the Keating era, noone could critique Aboriginal policy without being labelled racist. The atmosphere was stultifying, and there arose a small group of print commentators challenging the dominant orthodoxy. Once voices in the wilderness, since 1996, their numbers have grown to the point where their voice now dominates print media. It is becoming risky to express an opposing point of view.

Shane Stone’s speech to the Liberal Convention last weekend is a case in point. He did not use the word ‘elite’, instead accusing all commentators critical of the ‘children overboard’ lie as “not getting it” – that is, not getting the fact that the Australian people didn’t give a damn. We are lost in our fabricated version of history, unaware of our irrelevance in today’s Australia, he said, including in his list of sinners such erstwhile names as Michelle Grattan, almost universally recognised as the most careful, balanced, fair journalist around.

At first I wondered why Stone would devote his speech to a group of journalists he saw as irrelevant. Why bother? Could they still be a threat after all? Then I remembered Paul Keating once praising economic journalists as getting on board while decrying The Age’s Ken Davidson and Tim Colebatch as irrelevant troglydytes. Those were the days when everyone in the club had wet dreams about pure competition policy, before the Hanson phenomenon reminded them that human lives were at stake, and maybe they deserved some help.

Keating was engaging in triumphalism. So is Shane Stone. Part of that triumphalism is the ungracious winner’s desire to put his shoe on remaining critics, to silence small voices so they hear nothing but praise in their victory march.

The only way for progressive forces to claw back from irrelevance is to understand that the struggle will take a long time, and will require a coherent, accessible achievable alternative to the ideology which now rules us. For now, at least, the energy is there. Not in the Labor Party, but among the bleeding hearts.

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I’m thinking of starting a bleeding hearts club. Any suggested definitions of the term?

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Playwright Steve J. Spears has suggested a competition: “I think it’s time us left/libertarians came up with definitive nicknames for the Lib boys and gals. I’ve tried pushing “Viking John” for the PM and “Phillip Robot” or “Monty Burns” (a stolen idea) for Ruddock but they’re not sticking.”