What on earth is wrong with saying “all lives matter”?

It’s that time of the year again where no one’s doing all that much and the most innocuous comments are capable of causing offence – or confected offence at least.  

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack said ‘All lives matter’ and that was enough to cause outcry.   

Unsurprisingly, this drew the ire of the Greens, where offence taking is in their DNA. Deputy Leader Nick McKim used McCormack’s comments to launch an attack on the Liberals (even though McCormack is a National) for going down a ‘’Trump-style path towards post-truth politics”.

What was surprising though was that leading members of the Labor Party, Australia’s would-be alternative government, thought it wise to criticise McCormack on…