Tim Minchin on the fallout from his controversial single: "I knew I had done the right thing."

It was the song that gave survivors of child sexual abuse the opportunity to face Cardinal George Pell in Rome.

No matter which side you were on, Come Home Cardinal Pell provoked a passionate response.

Last night on The Project, song writer Tim Minchin discussed the fallout from the charity single, and how the attention it received impacted him personally and professionally.

Straight out of the gate, host Carrie Bickmore raised the fact that since the release of the single, Minchin had been quoted saying he felt sorry for Pell, an emotional reaction in strong opposition to the message of his song. But, Minchin explained, that’s not exactly what he meant.

“Whenever I say anything about this they’ll take the most weird thing I said,” he explained. “So look I don’t particularly feel sorry for him, but I did watching him.”

Minchin’s empathetic reaction came from a very human place.

“[Pell’s] a person, and I feel empathy for this man who’s got himself in this position, who’s got a huge amount of weight on his shoulders,”

But the Matilda The Musical writer wanted to make clear where is emotional and intellectual allegiances lie.

“The thing with empathy is you can place it where you need it,” he said. “And if I’d go back to read the dozens of letters I got from survivors saying the most incredible things about what happened that week, when the national conversation focused on the veracity of their claims, that’s when I knew I’d done the right thing.”

As noble and important as it is, ‘doing the right thing’ often comes with criticism and intense public scrutiny. Both of which Minchin faced in the days following his single’s release. Bickmore asked the 40-year-old musician how it had impacted him.

“Yeah, look I understand that if I do something harsh I’ll get harsh criticism,” he said.

But that criticism is not something Minchin lets worry him too much.

“The type of people who criticise me are the type of people whose criticism validates my position, because I’m so diametrically opposed to them anyway,” he said.

“Their criticism was so intellectually disingenuous that it didn’t really hurt,” he said. “But it’s an incredible, not very nice feeling.”

More than anything, Minchin seemed bemused by the attention, and by the amount of emphasis placed on this one song. After all, he has made a career off his wit, and willingness to call-out political and social injustice.

You can hear Come Home in full below (post continues after video):

“The weird thing is that it’s like for that couple of weeks, the only thing I’d ever done my whole life is write that song,” he said.

“But that’s just one in a hundred songs I’ve written in the last 10 years on a consistent line of criticising the ability for non-evidential belief systems to support bigotry if you want them to.”

Regardless of its place in the timeline of Minchin’s comedic, and musical career, there can be no doubt this “one in a hundred” song made an incredible impact on the survivors of sexual abuse it helped.