Day to Day Politics: “Know your place,” the words spoke, as chains rattled and the dust rose
Monday 29 January 2018
Australia Day has come and gone and in our laconic, true-blue, nonchalance, some have celebrated enthusiastically, others with indifference, and others lukewarmly, but most with a lack of lucidity.
What exactly are we celebrating? Well, most Australians wouldn’t have a clue. “Fairdinkum, who gives a stuff, mate. It’s a bloody holiday, mate.”
I needed to know more so I went to the Australia Day web site and found this:
“On Australia Day we celebrate all the things we love about Australia: land, sense of fair go, lifestyle, democracy, the freedoms we enjoy but particularly our people.
Australia Day is about acknowledging and celebrating the contribution that every Australian makes to our contemporary and dynamic nation. From our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – who have been here for more than 65,000 years – to those who have lived here for generations, to those who have come from all corners of the globe to call our country home.
The marking of 26 January is an important date in Australia’s history and has changed over time: starting as a celebration for emancipated convicts and evolving into what is now a celebration of Australia that reflects the nation’s diverse people.
Australia Day continues to be hugely popular, with 3 in 4 Australians believing it has a bigger meaning beyond being just a day off.”
It has been a day of conjecture – even division – for years and will remain so unless our politicians find some intestinal fortitude that takes away this cleaving. That strips away the division over a date that the First Inhabitants see as a day in which their country was invaded. How could logic see it any other way? It is such a simple issue when stripped bare of its implied racism. I’m not sure that conservatives have the heart for it. The date is wrong, change it.
Noel Pearson describes the betrayal from his own perspective. His efforts to work with conservatives over 17 years went up in smoke, and he faces up to the distressing reality of Indigenous affairs under the Turnbull government. It has achieved nothing.
“Of the major political developments of 2017, perhaps the most significant was the creation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Indigenous leaders from around the country met and came to a consensus position on the issue of recognition. They drafted a statement and accompanying program that was substantial and eminently achievable; one that addressed past wrongs and set the tone for future efforts on recognition and reconciliation. It was a massive achievement – smart and practical, unified and powerful. And it was rejected out of hand by the Turnbull government, with barely a moment’s consideration.”
It is truly remarkable that most of this consternation about a date that is provably wrong and inappropriate is brought about by politicians who themselves have so demeaned public office over the years that it has become almost impossible to advance change because of the community’s mistrust of them. Place yourself in the other’s shoes and hear their point of view. How do our first nation people feel when they hear the words of Tony Abbott:
“British settlement was a very good thing – it wasn’t good immediately for everyone. But the modern Australia that emerged from British settlement … is something that all of us, on balance, can and should be proud of.
“This idea that we can rewrite history, this idea that we should never have been settled the way we were, (a) it’s unrealistic and (b) it flies in the face of our country’s historical achievement.”
In light of the fact that our annual report card on “closing the gap” on the health of our Indigenous folk shows little improvement year to year it is obvious that Abbott’s remarks are made with British snobbery.
At the age of 77 I feel well-versed in voicing the opinion that contrary to what the Prime Minister said on the 26th that we are a very welcoming country. We are not. We didn’t welcome the Italians, the Greeks the Jews, Chinese or Vietnamese. It has taken maybe three to four generations to overcome our ethnic and religious aversions.
But let us be of no misunderstanding over changing the date for Australia Day. The vitriol displayed to those who want change by ultra right-wing groups (who are as un Australian as one can be) will find its voice elsewhere. We cannot celebrate without acknowledging that some of us are racist and we celebrate it in Australia Day.
We cannot think that by changing the date we have somehow rid ourselves of our guilt.
Will it as Jacinta Nampijinpa Price puts it:
” … take the pain away, placate anger, assuage guilt? Will it save the lives of those we keep burying before their time? Will it get one illiterate child to school? Will it get one pregnant mum to stop drinking grog to avoid inflicting a lifetime of disability on an unborn baby?”
All of the aforementioned principles from the Australia Day website are fine things to celebrate but they need a glue that binds them altogether. And that is that we have matured to the point that one of us should be our head of state. We can hardly celebrate all these attributes when our head of state is a foreigner. It doesn’t make sense.
There needs to be a reconciliation. Another marriage of equality but this time between all those things that have been wrong with all those that have been right. Both have much to speak about and it is as hard for one side as it is the other. Why not start with the myth that Captain Cook discovered Australia. He didn’t. Then we could well and truly give terra nullius the short shift and move on.
How do we sing our anthem while flags, featuring another nation’s flag, flutter much about our past but little about our future? How do we celebrate a true Australia when we cannot find words in which to include our First Nation’s people in our constitution, let alone enacting a treaty? There are too many parts that are yet to become a whole but no, we should not stop celebrating except to say that each year in our schools a little more truth should be added to what is already a strange yet endearing history..
Alas, but in the absence of true blue leadership, and perhaps in the Australian tradition, it will have to wait another year to debate the same notions. “No worries, mate, she’ll be right.”
My Thought for the day
“Know your place the words spake as chains rattled and the dust rose.”
21 comments
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lawrencewinder -
Peter F -
Elizabeth Kelly -
Terry2 -
helvityni -
wam -
jimhaz -
Roswell -
wam -
win jeavons -
Harry -
diannaart -
townsvilleblog -
Matters Not -
jimhaz -
jimhaz -
Florence nee Fedup -
johnlord2013 -
Roswell -
jimhaz -
Judi Griffith
Return to home pageSentiments which are growing and ones that point directly to the irrelevance of the ruling rabble in just about every sphere of Australian life.
http://shanewombat.blogspot.com.au/2018/01/oioioi.html
John, We will make the change, but it will take a leader with greater courage than Turnbull. As for the flag, the location of the union Jack is not accidental, it is the dominant corner of any flag, and it is the corner visible at ALL times. Have you noticed that, when there is no bosses, the union jack is still identifiable?
Some have asked why Australians are much less patriotic than yanks. I suggest that the unspeakably cringeworthy national anthem provides a clue. Basically our apathy has allowed the establishment to destroy us.
Christopher Pyne was asked why the government would be lending money ($3.8 billion) to our arms manufacturers when normally growth businesses borrow from a bank.
Good question !
I didn’t vote for these numpties it must have been youse.
Here we are away from madding crowds, yet our Liberal leaders are hell-bent on border protection ( No 1 on their list) ,sending our men and women to other distant nations’ battles, now our Government is even willing to lend money to ARMS MANUFACTURERS, even our banks are not…
They must have not have played enough war games as pre-schoolers, and therefore not gotten the war out of their system…
It is pretty damning of people who feel jan 26th satisfies these descriptors:
“celebrate all the things we love about Australia: land, sense of fair go, lifestyle, democracy, the freedoms we enjoy but particularly our people.”
Jacinta has been quoted:
“By ignoring this date, we’re ignoring the significance of this particular date and we do need to learn about our country’s history in its entirety — all that is really horrible about our history, but all that’s really good about our history, as well,” she said.
Ms Price believes that Australia Day should be a day for all Australians to come together, regardless of their ethnic or cultural background.
She is entitled to her opinion that agrees with the IPA and is comfortable with part of her ancestry being celebrated and dismissing the efforts of people from the rest of the world who contributed to the Australia of today.
She has voiced he concerns about the change not helping ‘to take the pain….’
Surely, an inclusive date could change the way that people think of Aborigines, blacks, chinks, slopes, islanders, wogs, other europeans and poms?
Perhaps we can come to the realisation that they all contributed to the Australia we know today.
ps
my granddaughter is giving a five minute talk on Uluru.I find it sad that the Anangu have known Uluru for thousand of years the rest of Australia have known of Uluru for 25 years but still know nothing of the Anangu whose culture believes in self respect so they have not closed the rock to climbers but have asked people to respect their wishes and choose not to climb.
Respect for Aborigines is not part of the Australian history nor culture and it is certainly not part of jan 26th.
As for $3.8 billion labor’s economy is still working?? what do you think billy the pricks have doubled the debt tripled the deficit and still can give to everybody except aussie workers??
[We cannot think that by changing the date we have somehow rid ourselves of our guilt]
Personally I find it racist to assume guilt. If one looks at what underlies guilt does it not assume cultural superiority. ie my ancestors should have been above what occurred because they are superior people and so now we must feel guilty.
Not for me.
The aboriginal protesters, seemingly a minority of the protesters, do not want ANY Australia Day, and therefore I cannot sympathise with them. Too racist for me as they are putting their culture above all others.
The idea that they own all the land just because they are ancestors is also racist. Anyone born here owns the land to the same degree. Native title was simply a recognition of this right – it is the equivalence of western proprietary ownership of land where children inherit their parents land.
Wow, John. Outstanding.
This was so different from your usual post, and shows us the breadth of your repertoire.
jimhas a right to an opinion but a person who does not consider Aborigines as worthy of a proper noun and individuality afforded whitemen(not women??) is a redneck.
The ownership of the land is a white concept that proved terra nullius Aborigines own nothing. Mabo accepted that he owned and worked the land in the same way as a whiteman so no terra nullius on Murray Island this was extrapolated by judges to Aborigines ‘owning and utilising’ the land.
So our banks are more ethical than this disaster of a government! We must not make cars, but tanks would be great? Says it all about this selfserving bunch of pompous bullies. They MUST go!
jimhaz:
Let’s forget about “guilt” and your strange notion of racism and just admit that our “First Peoples remain dispossessed of their human rights, deeply disadvantaged, disempowered in all of the political decision-making that impacts their lives and discriminated against in so many tragic ways. As a consequence, our modern Australian nation is weakened at its core. This holds us back from genuine equality, which we claim to cherish and it fails to see that one of our greatest strengths is the world’s most ancient multicultural diversity, based on the hundreds of distinct sovereign nations, with different languages and cultural practices, and an agreed social formula for co-existence, which has demonstrated success for longer than anyone knows”.
If you have a substantive rebuttal why this cannot be so or ought not be so please feel free to expound it.
https://independentaustralia.net/australia/australia-display/treaty-making-is-the-way-ahead,11142
Excellent work, John.
Australia Day, for me is a day to commemorate the mass murder of Aboriginal Australians, we live on a land that has not been paid for, we know that Aboriginal Australians were used as slaves on western cattle properties, as farm hands breaking in horses, and as maids serving the rich land owners (what a laugh landowners). These families, many of whom live in poverty have not been paid for the work their mothers and fathers did all those years ago. When Peter Beattie was the Premier of Queensland, arond 20 years ago he estimated to pay those families what they should receive was approximately $550 million, he said that was why we couldn’t pay them the money they are owed, this is only the Queensland Aboriginal Australians. To my way of thinking a debt is a debt until it is paid, and paid they should be. We have seen today $3.8 billion made available for the purpose of killing people, what about the debt still owing to our Aboriginal Australians?
Donate to Get Up? Soon you may have to provide a statutory declaration (witnessed by a JP) that you are an Australian Citizen and not a foreigner. I stress again, unless we define what is meant by a donation, the proposed legislation will only discriminate against the average punter, while editorials, news reporting and fake news escaping the donations net.
Rupert, as a foreigner, will carry on as normal. When will the sleepers wake?
No Harry, I do not agree with the paragraph the way it is phrased. Or the article for that matter. A treaty will not work because too much will be asked.
This is not to say that I do not recognise that they are suffering and that the influence of the west has taken away a lot of the day to day happiness that the true bloods would still have if the West had left them alone.
However, I am of the “smoothing of the dying pillow” mindset. Adapt or culturally perish……or some may be able to choose to completely isolate themselves from the West like a few Amazon tribes have (which means no lefties looking to help them and no science research).
Get Up may need to become a charity – like the IPA
Patriotism last refuge of the scoundrel. We will become one nation when we when we make reconciliation with the first nations in this country. Not that hard to do. We will then be able to recognise the Aboriginal people and their place. At the same time, recognition can be given to all those who have come since 1788. From convict, free settlers, mostly fleeing from poverty and war. The Chinese and those from the Middle East that came to make their fortune. All waves of migration adding to the society we are today.
We have to acknowledge the wrongs of the past. In doing so, in spite of the past, we have achieved much to be proud of. We can’t become one unless we are capable of doing this.
Thank you Roswell. In fact greatly appreciated.
Think nothing of it, John.
[Patriotism last refuge of the scoundrel]
It is necessary for large groups in a competing world. Wiki indicates Chauvinism, such as displayed by Trump with his foreign polices, is the real problem.
[We will become one nation when we when we make reconciliation with the first nations in this country. Not that hard to do]
I remain unconvinced of this as we do not know the details of what would satisfy them and still be accepted by the rest of Australia – half of whom are not white descendants.
The radicals will never be satisfied.
I believe that once Australia becomes a republic that the first Head of State should be an educated Indigenous person….No I am not an Indigenous person…