Yes, I’m sure you’re all aware that Publicity-Seeking Pauline, fresh from re-election stormed out of the Acknowledgement of Country declaring that she didn’t acknowledge that there was such a thing and she never would.
Of course, this has led many to wonder why she’s never done it before, but we need to be fair here. Until the other day, it’s highly likely that she hadn’t been listening. Pauline, you understand, was that girl at school who – after being in the previous two classes where the material was being revised – screams that the teacher never told the class that there was a test coming up and she hasn’t studied and it’s all the teacher’s fault and why are all the rest of you sucking up and pretending that you knew about this.
Pauline’s world view is quite simple. If you’re an immigrant, you’ve got to accept that we were here first and just go along with our customs and traditions. Of course, if you’re white, you don’t need to worry that Indigenous people were here before the British because they didn’t have a flag so they weren’t really a country and now that there is an aboriginal flag, it shouldn’t be hung anywhere because if we start doing that then, next thing you know, we’ll be asked to pretend that they have customs from before white people came along and taught them about the whole idea of tradition.
Yes, I’ve noticed some people suggesting that the Welcome to Country was devised just a few short years ago and doesn’t have a tradition going back generations.
Now, I’m not an expert here, so I’m not going to go out on a limb and say conclusively that they’re just racist idiots who probably don’t even have their vote counted because they usually get the numbers wrong. However, I will say that the fact that most white people weren’t aware of it until a few years ago doesn’t mean that it didn’t exist.
I know, I know, next I’ll be saying that First Nations people existed before white people came along and discovered them.
But, of course, if they’re right and Welcome to Country is only something that started in the 20th Century than maybe – in the interests of not being divisive – we could scrap it.
And, in the interests of not being divisive, perhaps Australia Day could be scrapped because it’s something that only started being celebrated in the last few decades and it certainly doesn’t have a history going back to before the arrival of white settlement.
Whatever, the very least we could do, is stop bogans running around with Australian flags on January 26th. After all, it was the Union Jack that was raised on January 25th or 27th or whichever day the boats actually landed at Port Jackson, so they shouldn’t be introducing this recent flag that’s been in everyday use less than a hundred years* to celebrate an event from so long ago.
Still, now that Pauline has set the precedent, I look forward to all sorts of people walking out of such Parliamentary traditions as the Lord’s Prayer, Oaths to the Queen, votes, Speaker’s rulings, etc. It should certainly liven up the place and lay the groundwork for a QANON take-over when Scotty gets back from his victory lap of… Oh, that’s right, he lost, I keep forgetting because I listen to the news.
By the way, has anyone seen Barnaby or should we start putting his photo up on telegraph poles? Yes, I know we don’t want to find him but we should possibly warn international travellers to ignore him when he tells them it’s a long-standing tradition that they buy him a drink.
*If you want to argue that the flag is older than that. fine. But we only started using the Blue Ensign while Menzies was PM. The Red Ensign was the more common flag prior to that.
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Eric Bogle had mentioned that “ red headed woman “ in one of his songs when she first floated to all our attention and mentioning the “aboriginal business “ . I thought when she nearly lost her seat in recent election ,good riddance ,but somehow she has floated to the surface again like a turd and now trying to catch peoples attention again.
Note to the AIMN editors:
‘…and now that there is an aboriginal flag, it should be hung anywhere because if we start doing that then, next thing you know, we’ll be asked to pretend that they have customs…’
‘should’ should be shouldn’t, shouldn’t it… at least my parsing of the context of the sentence suggests it should.
The beetrooter is missing because his old man carked it.
Rossleigh, you are being very unfair on Porelein, the pissant from the Senate who is trying to restore the Bjelke Petersen electoral gerymander. It is just nasty the way you accurately & concisely describe her self-serving ”party” of ”interesting” Australian voters who are unhappy with COALiiton policies since Little Johnnie Howard floated to the top of the Liarbral Party cess-pit in 1996.
Indeed, it is very cruel to emphasise her fear of Aborigines having more talent than herself despite the too many impediments which Australian society places upon them to retard their economic success. Naturally Porelien is upset by Aboriginal affairs in Parliament House because their correct place is in the outback, out of sight of essential government services, mustering cattle for foreign station owners in return for flour & baccy, not cluttering up the slums of inner metropolitan cities that European refugees from WWII now want to redevelop into residential condominiums.
For Porelein, ”Boat people rulez, OK!!” whether they came in 1788 or 1948 after WWII. Move on, ”there is nothing to see here” about Aboriginal genocide as government policy, that was necessary to protect English land title system ….. pity that Aboriginal sovereignty was never ceded ….. thus making the English land title system irrelevant.
And it all started in 1788 under the Queen Anne Ensign, not the later Union Jack.
Would you be so kind as to refrain from encouraging Beetrooter from emerging from his rathole in any future time. His political overthrow by Littleproud & Ley has done regional Australia proud by exposing the inferiority of all their current Nazional$ politicians. Indeed, even Beetrooter’s late father voted for Tony Windsor as the best candidate for economic & social progress in New England while in 2016 Beetrooter’s extramarital affairs were blamed on Windsor while Beetrooter was jumping the blanket himself.
Strange times we are facing with the Greens’ leader refusing to be photographed with the Australian national flag : it seems to have the same affect on Bandt as a crucifix has with Dracula.
Now we have Pauline walking out of parliament and newly minted senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who identifies as a Warlpiri-Celtic woman (the celtic reference recognising the Scottish heritage of her father) also reacting to the welcome to country and other symbolism.
Taking a line from Martin Luther King’s speech, I Have a Dream , she said :
The question is, have we (white folk) overdone the smoking ceremonies and welcomes to country, have they become meaningless ?
Pawween is the extant flesh version of Dorian Gray’s painting with all her inner ugliness and vileness out there for everyone to see.
Terence, you have a point. Maybe the ‘welcome to country’ should be a bit more informative of the situation, eg. ‘welcome to country that was stolen without treaty and even to this day fails to have a voice in Parliament for the descendants of the original inhabitants’. Sounds a bit verbose, how about ‘welcome to stolen country’?
From linked article April 8th, 2018, Pauline – Another Bloody Indigenous Person Making Impossible Demands!
It seems that I got more things right than the Reserve Bank in terms of predicting the future!!
Simply brilliant exposition.
It appears that during all those years of frying fish and chips, the fish and chips weren’t the only things that got fried.
Poor lean Hanson, Australia’s most divorceable female impersonator, has been up to her usual outbursts of stupidity again.., and again. Not being satisfied with ignorant raving, she now resorts to stupidity of movement, evacuating (hah) herself from the poxes of educated honesty in her vicinity. Queensland gave her to us all, (so many poxes, plagues and pestilences) along with ratbag Rennick, Klabberbrained Katter, Fat Clive Podpolisher, Benito Canavan, Peter Duckwit-Futton, and a large cast of repulsive huns over time. So much faecal matter, so little flushing…As for the red ensign we basically fought under it in W W2, and we fought in the Great War under the union jack. Menzies pushed for the use of the blue ensign, as it was liberal party colour propaganda…
Its very, very concerning that gullible Albanese is spouting the same garbage that Tawny Rabbott and Scummo did about Australia’s “high quality” coal.
“What you would see is a replacement with coal from other countries that’s likely to produce higher emissions because of the quality of our product.”
Labor are saying that we have to export Australian coal to help reduce global carbon emissions.
Make of that what you will but its utter bullshit.
The more you export the more carcinogenic gases you put into the shared atmosphere of our planet.
Albanese is either corrupt or stupid or both.
If you thought Labor were the better alternative on climate change, think again, because its business as usual for the coal lobby and the Minerals Council of Australia, no matter who is in charge.
The greens have the best policies.
Luckily I am with an electricity provider where I can buy 100% renewable energy and pay wholesale prices, which is currently 8.7c per kWh.
Terence,
the Greens are more than happy to stand in front of Australia’s Nation flag (with a Union Jack taking up most of it) as long as there is an indigenous flag next to it.
“We are one and we are many . . . to this land we all belong . . . ”
When they won’t get an indigenous flag, then they don’t agree to it.
Time for changing our attitudes, if things are ever going to be able to be improved.
Albos Elbow
Mr Elbow, you are wrong – Adam Bandt specifically had the Australian flag removed from the backdrop to his photo op leaving just the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands flags : see photo.
I have no particular affinity with our national flag and if the Greens want to change the flag then let’s have a national discussion, a design competition for a new flag and perhaps a plebiscite but in the meantime it is the Australian national Flag.
green and flags
Who the fuck needs a flag and who the fuck cares. What part of global warming/climate change don’t these arseholes understand? It is happening now, on a planet we are intimately involved with, and fucking albanese tells us our coal is cleaner, we have a duty to dig it up, enrich offshore investors, subsidise the fuckers, see fuck all return, only in increased emissions. Whether the greens have preferable policies, maybe they do, but to me, bandt is just another power hungry arsehole.
To me, labor, you are a mob off spineless jerks happily wanking off to your own bullshit. Mouth the platitudes, we have clean coal at a you beaut mates rates special, fuck our land, rape the environment, blowup sacred sites, all good, our coal is clean, our gas extra special and we give you a shitload of money to fuck us. Good deal. Who gives a fuck about flags, for fuck sake.
RKC, I’m unqualified to comment on this but I’ll stick my neck out anyway; a sucker for punishment. Flags are conventional, they’ve been around for centuries and for some odd reason they seem to have a certain significance in the tides of human affairs. Can we do without them? Maybe. Are they going to disappear anytime soon, per public usage? Unlikely. Humans are odd, you know that. We do weird things and attach meaning and significance to those weirdnesses.
I suspect the ALP is as aware of global warming & its ramifications as anybody. I also suspect that they know that they can’t just shut down the mining industry as an executive decision; made today and done tomorrow. The social, economic and political chaos that would ensue wouldn’t be worth the risk of such an action. For what it’s worth, ‘clean coal’, an oxymoron to be sure, is probably marginally ‘better’ than ‘unclean’ coal whatever that is (I have no idea about the relative degrees of coal qualities); nevertheless, I’m confident that there would be a raft of contractual obligations in place for Australian coal producers to supply the international market, and in the general sense, breaking of contracts is a no-no, and I’m assuming, particularly so when those contracts are inked in the billions of dollars, and the consequential pain involved in taking executive decisions to shut down the industry would have people slitting their wrists and jumping out of tenth story windows.
I agree with you to a large extent, but politicians are in an invidious situation; damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
Not to make light of the situation, but we’re on target to blast through a 2 degree C rise, and likely to reach a 3 degree rise from baseline within the next century; the planet will cook, the environmental damage will be catastrophic, the species loss, the same; humanity is in the frame for its greatest challenge; successful management is not guaranteed, and so it goes; the end with a whimper and not a bang.
And James Lovelock passed away this week, on his 103rd birthday. Not a single commenter on this website made mention of his death. Just goes to show where people’s interest and priorities lie.
Odd thing to say re Lovelocks death Canguro ?? Cause I didn’t mention it my priorities are lying somewhere. Don’t quite get that. Don’t give a toss about flags but obviously flags are much loved worldwide so I gotta accept they are here for a good while yet. Sad to hear albo’s bullshit coal rhetoric going down business as usual path. Planet 🌎, medium rare or well done, what will it be ??
Terence,
that photo doesn’t prove anything.
Greens are trying to be inclusive and fair to all. Whats wrong with that.
I doubt very much that Brandt specifically would have asked for the Australian flag to be removed.
RoadKillCafe,
Absolutely, the flag isn’t the fucking issue.
If you want to bag the Greens go right ahead, there are plenty of other reasons to. Nobody’s perfect.
Albanese is turning into another mouthpiece for the coal lobby and the Minerals Council of Australia, just like the last ten Australian PMs.
Ask yourself WTF is going on.
John: Nice work. If memory serves, the flag is a result of a competition of the last century and approved by the King, which is largely irrelevant in this day and age. We could go back to the good ‘ol days and line the troops up in rows with flag and drum…
Maybe Albo has to tread carefully until there is a viable replacement for the fossil fueled generators. The cartel have shown they have us by the scruds and happy to play us, by somehow being able to rectify “unexpected” outages of generating capacity when the spot price is high enough, set on a background of “scheduled maintenance” during a winter peak. They can make us feel a whole lot more pain. What I can’t understand is why there is no “national emergency cap” on the price of coal and gas considering we’re the ones digging it up.
As for Poorlean, isn’t it impressive how far somebody so ignorant and stupid can go. It speaks volumes about the people that voted her in – a true mirror of her constituents.
Albos Elbow
We seem to be a crossed purposes : of course the flag should not be the issue but Adam Bandt has made the Australian national flag HIS issue.
When he attended the press conference lectern there were three flags in the backdrop behind him : the Australian flag, the Aboriginal Flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag.
He found the Australian flag offensive and said it a reminder of our former colonial status and he had it removed leaving the other two flags.
Personally I would prefer to see all flags removed. I recall when Tony Abbott was sprouting flags from his derriere, it drove me to distraction that’s one reason why I would prefer Adam Bandt not to get fixated with flag symbolism, leave that to the Liberals.
Fred: Yes, the current national flag is the result of a competition – one which was rigged. The terms were that the British Blue Ensign HAD to be in the top left corner, as that position has specific vexilogical meaning. That flag literally says that we are subject to the British crown.
As much as I want it changed, it’s a long way from being the most important issue we face.
We have to transition away from fossil fuels; that’s a given. No, we can’t just shut everything down overnight; the entire country would collapse, quite apart from the international ramifications of existing supply contracts, as Canguro poointed out.
But that does mean no new mines, no Beetaloo, no Scarborough, etc. It means funding for retraining and alternative employment for everyone involved in the industry. It means promoting alternative energy sources. It means dropping the subsidies and tax breaks for the fossil fuel companies. It means making real changes not just giving the issue lip service.
Leefe: How about creating wind turbine and solar panel manufacturing capabilities in Australia – we require so much capacity that surely the industries would be viable with the bonus that we would not be reliant on China. It could be funded, in part, by redirecting the “subsidies and tax breaks for the fossil fuel companies”, who will retaliate by raising prices. With an objective of net zero, the concept of new coal/gas mines is axiomatically stupid.
Exactly, Fred. And electric cars. We should have been in on the ground floor with this stuff but, as usual, the LNP just broke up the foundation we had in place and chucked all the bits in the bin, so now we have to start over from scratch.
Brainless and moronic thug RWNJ’s at their finest:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-30/shrine-of-remembrance-in-rainbow-colour-scrapped/101284904
Terence,
To be heard in Australia you need to be controversial and outspoken.
The Greens have achieved their goal of bringing this to the public’s attention and haven’t Sky News just lapped it up like love sick puppies.
Its not just an Adam Brandt thing, the whole party is behind the stance. They all do it.
The greens were the first political party in Australia to set up a First Nations Network to encourage indigenous people to get involved in politics and have a true voice in the running of Australia and this is happening.
I’m not supporting rejecting the Australian flag, as an Australian citizen, I grew up to respect it, but I do admire the way the Greens are attacking issues head on to get some discussion and potentially some action on it.
And I do support the indigenous movement and their struggle as the First Nation to have a say in how the country should be run.
Indigenous Australians have a long and continuing connection to the lands and waters of Australia.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures are rich in knowledge, passing stories from generation to generation, and hold a unique and enduring place in our nation’s history.
The next step in this story is to ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have more of a say on the laws, policies and services that impact them, their communities and their lives. There has been a lot of work already undertaken to think about the best model for our nation, including the work of the Referendum Council which led to the Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017.
In 2018, a cross-party parliamentary committee looked at the Uluru Statement and other work. They recommended the Australian Government start a process of co-design to develop the details for an Indigenous Voice. Over the past year, 52 Australians, mostly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, have been working on this process. They have looked at how an Indigenous Voice might work, and how local voices can be heard on what’s important and what’s needed for local communities.
That is all very important for all Australians.
The flag is just another issue for discussion and is important in the context of an Indigenous Voice of Australia. Many indigenous Australians are very offended by the Colonial flag and celebrating Australia day as the day when the British conquered our first nations peoples.
Another real crisis is climate change and the lack of action by both the Liberal party and Labor.
When Albanese starts saying that we have to protect coal workers jobs and export more Australian coal to reduce carbon emissions, you know the rot has well and truly set in.
80% of voters responded to a Morgan Exit Poll that action on Climate Change was their most important issue. That’s how prime ministers, treasurers and Coal-NP politicians lost their “safe” seats to the Teals and other independents.
If the Labor Party don’t do enough on this issue, they will become yet another 3 year dud Labor government.
Thankyou, Canguro, I always depend on you for a more considered opinion, yes, your comments require thoughts, thankyou. Yes, as you say, that is the way of it. I find, lately, that the rape of this, our home, our planet, our future, damages me, saddens me, affects me.
We go on, do the best we can in any given moment, cheers
Back when Malcolm Roberts was found to have dual citizenship, should not the party have then been renamed Pauline Hanson’s Two nations party .
The gobsmacking hypocrisy that flows from the mind and sewer mouth of Her Vileness never ceases to amaze me. If anyone should give up the $210k plus pay packet it would have to be Putrid Scumson for pretending to be human.
https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/politics/scott-morrison-finally-sworn-in-as-an-mp-after-skipping-parliament-for-controversial-japan-trip/news-story/cf63b38d0386107ffa309d82cd9c1118