Gasp! Julia Gillard was not just a socialist at university, but a feminist too, the Herald Sun has revealed.

Not only that, but one of her colleagues “visited the former Soviet Union and came back praising the reforms of president Mikhail Gorbachev”.

You’ve got to worry about the political judgement of people who didn’t realise that Gorbachev, last seen flogging Louis Vuitton bags in ads in the glossies, was anything other than an opportunistic, hypocritical Communist attempting to delay the inevitable.

But, as Robert Louis Stevenson observed, “Youth is wholly experimental”.

We all try strange things when we’re young. We soon learn not to mix gin, red wine, crème de menthe and chicken kebabs with extra garlic sauce.

Better playing with potent politics than certain substances. “I chewed over Bakuninite anarchism, but didn’t swallow it” sounds slightly more plausible than a certain Clinton line.

Peter Costello was a long-haired radical when he was young. Who else was a Teenage Trotskyite?

Send your contributions to boss@crikey.com.au with ” Youthful Indiscretions” in the subject line.