When right-wing ideologue Kevin Donnelly was appointed to co-chair a review of the national curriculum many braced themselves for a reignition of the culture wars.

This was a man, after all, who complained that in English "literary classics are on the same footing as SMS messages, graffiti and movie posters", who had called for the Bible to be taught in state schools and who said many parents would consider the sexual practices of gays "decidedly unnatural".

"The cultural left has taken the long march through the education system and enforced its biased, ideological world view on schools," Donnelly once opined.