Loading "Yesterday I went to the opening of the new Northern Beaches Hospital and there was a formal welcome to country, fair enough, every single speaker, and there were about six of them, acknowledged country, fair enough, but there was not a single prayer ... even though our society is absolutely unimaginable without the influence of Christianity," Mr Abbott said. There is also a lack of religious and cultural teachings in schools, Mr Abbott said at the launch of the book, which is a follow-up to Dr Donnelly's earlier book, How Political Correctness Is Destroying Australia — Enemies Within and Without, released in June this year. "It's not enough simply to be able to read, write, count and think, there needs to be an essential cultural literacy that everyone coming through an Australian education should have," Mr Abbott said. "That means a familiarity with the gospel stories, especially the parables which have done so much to shape our culture. And this is not a question of trying to ram religious faith down people's throats, it's a matter of giving people the knowledge essential to understand the culture in which they live.

"I am all in favour of Asian, environmental and Indigenous perspectives, but are these really the three top priorities which should permeate every aspect of our curriculum? I doubt it very much indeed." Like his previous book, Dr Donnelly's new book argues for the need to preserve Western culture. "What is known as the new sociology of education basically argues that ... mathematics, physics, science, they're all social constructs, they have no inherent meaning or value," said Dr Donnelly, who was a co-chair of the 2014 Australian Curriculum review. "[And] if they're constructs they can be reshaped, deconstructed, remodelled in terms of the cultural left's ideology, so you now have Aboriginal science being put into the national curriculum, which I find astounding." Dr Donnelly is referring to recommendations for teachers from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority on how to incorporate Aboriginal culture and history when covering existing science topics in a bid to increase the accessibility of the subject and close the gap.

Loading What we need, Dr Donnelly said, is a return to 1950s Australia, where things were less complicated and children were happier. "Some people talk about political correctness as being polite and as being civil and that for many years we discriminated unfairly," Dr Donnelly said. "Now all of that is true... [but] we used to run around as kids, happy as Larry, free-range, no helicopter parents, doing all kinds of dodgy stuff. "No one had heard of multiculturalism or diversity and difference, no one had heard of identity politics or microagression. We were kids growing up in Australia in the 1950s or 60s, where we were all equal, we were all proud of who we were, and how times have changed."