From what I can make out the term 'political correctness' as used by cultural conservatives is part of the long-running assault by conservative opinion on progressive secular liberal values. Valerie Scatamburlo points out in Soldiers of Misfortune:

Redirecting the wrath once reserved for commies and pinko compatriots, the New Right concocted a new adversary comprised of Left intellectuals and multicultural sympathizers, and embarked upon an ideological struggle to reclaim the last bastion allegedly controlled by radicals – the academy [...] Suddenly, those intellectuals who had begun to speak out against sedimented forms of racism, debilitating practices of patriarchy, and xenophobia were cast as anti-democratic and anti-Western. Conservatives interpreted demands for inclusive curricula, canon revision, and pedagogical reform as signals that Western civilization itself was under siege by the "new" barbarians clamouring at the gates.

Scatamburlo argues that political correctness is a useful form of ideological shorthand brought into play by today's guardians of the status quo to decry any position that challenges the virtuosity of capitalism, the nobility of right-wing cultural values, or the notion that oppressive relations of racism and sexism are still pervasive in America, Australia or the UK. It is deployed by conservatives (the openly partisan Fox News and Murdoch Press) to project themselves as moderate and objective in relation to Left-wing lunatic extremists.

In this discourse the Coalition becomes the party of the common man and the ALP is a party beholden to a powerful New Class of liberal elites that wishe to impose its will upon "ordinary," "average" Australian through its control of the media, academia, and government bureaucracy. Conservatives argue that this liberal elite is responsible for a decadent liberal Australian culture that assaults family values, produces obscenity, embraces pornography, disrespects authority, coddles criminals, stymies initiative, foments revolution and so on

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