Speaking on multiculturalism at the Earth Dialogues Brisbane 2006 forum, he said the cultural Left of the 1980s and 90s was responsible for the "more ridiculous and easily mocked aspects" of what became known as political correctness.

"True it is that much of the excesses of leftist political correctitude were anti-intellectual and part of a political and cultural agenda against the Right," Mr Pearson said.

"But the campaign over the last decade against political correctness in this country has come to be a licence for all species of yobbo insensitivity and chauvinism, as well as a bone-headed obscurantism and tabloid anti-intellectualism."

In the nation's cultural wars, Mr Pearson said, a leftist political correctitude based on anti-intellectual premises had been replaced by a rightist one.

"In the same way as the Left on campus used PC as a club with which to beat the so-called Neanderthals of the Right and discovered the benefits of so doing, the Right are now in the ascendancy in the cultural wars and they now proudly wear the mantle of Neanderthal insensitivity and anti-intellectualism."

That mantle, he said, had "yielded much fruit for the parties of the Right in their electoral successes of the past decade".

Mr Pearson said most of the intellectual and cultural debate in Australia echoed the "main current" emanating from the US.