On Pride and Prejudice and Being an Australian
Today is January 26. This is the day that Australia chooses to celebrate its national day. I do not celebrate on this day. To do so is disrespectful, shameful and insensitive in the extreme.
Do not mistake me though.
I love my country. I love its physicality — its red deserts and snow-capped mountains, its jeweled seas, and ancient sandy beaches. I love the wiry, tangly, jumbly, disarray of its mallee country and the brooding profusion of its rainforests. I love its unique fauna from the somnambulant koala to the feisty Tasmanian devil. I love its fascinating flora from the delicate spider orchid to the majestic eucalyptus regnans, arguably the tallest tree in the world. I love my country’s people -the indigenous people, embedded, heart and soul in the history and topography of the land’s physicality, and its adopted people, with their larrikin disrespect for authority and their capacity for back-breaking work. I even love the “tall poppy syndrome” insofar as it says, “we are all equal here mate, don’t get too big for your boots”. Egalitarianism and “the fair go” are historically what make Australia loveable. So I love my country and I will never be ashamed of it.
But I am ashamed of my country’s government. I am ashamed of the way my country’s government is turning my country away from being the land of “the fair go” to one where the poor and underprivileged are victimized — where an incapacitated worker must wait until retirement age to collect his meager superannuation but a politician can collect her million dollar pension immediately, simply by losing an election; where a struggling single mother is imprisoned for “social security fraud” or a disabled young man is driven to suicide by the government’s relentless computer driven attempts to recoup a spurious debt, while CEOs are given millions of dollars for taking public companies to the brink of bankruptcy.
I am ashamed of the way my country’s government has corrupted the previous reputation of Australia as a place of welcome epitomized in these lines from our national anthem,
“For those who’ve come across the seas We’ve boundless plains to share”
to one where we imprison people who ask for our help and torture them with indefinite detention in appalling conditions until they become so despairing and sick that they would rather die by their own hand or return home to be killed by regimes they have fled in fear of their lives. I am ashamed of a government that has made cruelty, torture and inhumanity the hallmark of our nation.
I am ashamed of the way my country’s government is changing us from the lucky, clever country where students were supported to improve our country’s intellectual wealth to one where students are forced to exhaust themselves at three or four jobs just to survive. I am ashamed of the way my country’s government seeks to marginalize both its weakest and its most intelligent, turning us instead into a land of compassionless mediocrity.
Most of all I am ashamed of the way my country’s government continues to mistreat our indigenous people. I am ashamed that while indigenous people make up only 3% of our population, they make up 29% of our prisoners. I am ashamed and incandescent with rage that indigenous children aged 10–17 are 24 times more likely to be incarcerated than non-indigenous children. Come to that, I am ashamed and angry that children as young as 10 are imprisoned at all. I am deeply ashamed that despite our indigenous people constantly forgiving and reaching out in reconciliation Australia’s government refuses to hear their pleas and offers. On 26 May 2017 the Uluru Statement from the Heart was released. This statement was written after months of consultation with over 1200 indigenous people and called for a “First Nations Voice” in the Australian Constitution and a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of “agreement-making” and truth-telling between the Australian Government and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. (Makarrata is a Yolngu word approximating the meaning of “treaty”.) The Statement was presented to government on 30 June 2017 and rejected out of hand by the government just four months later. There was no parliamentary consideration given to the Statement; there was no community discussion. Just a flat rejection: “The government does not believe such a radical change to our Constitution’s representative institutions has any realistic prospect of being supported by a majority of Australians in a majority of states”. (A majority of votes in a majority of states is required to make amendments to the Australian Constitution). I am ashamed that Australia is the only Commonwealth nation without a treaty with its First Peoples.
Today I am again ashamed and distressed that Australia’s government is refusing to consider that to have a day of fun, festivity and fireworks on a day which causes our First Australians so much present and remembered trauma is cruel and callous beyond measure.
So, I love my country but I hang my head in shame at its government. I might even go so far as to say I hate its government.
That being said, I am not one to curse the darkness when I can light a candle so on the issue of Australia Day and January 26 I light this small candle.
There seem to be three prevailing reasons for resisting changing the date of Australia Day two of which are of little or no consequence. There are those few who are racist bigots who enjoy the fact that the current situation causes pain to indigenous people. A few members of the government might be among them. Without apology, I dismiss these few. Their views do not deserve the light of day, let alone consideration. Then there are those, and I suspect most members of the government fall into this group, who resist changing the date because they feel that doing so would be to capitulate to “political correctness”. I am not sure that this group deserves much consideration either. I am old enough to realize that “political correctness” used to be called politeness or kindness. I was brought up to avoid behaviour that caused pain or discomfort to others and that is generally what political correctness is trying to do. So, I do not really think that refusing to change behaviour that hurts others deserves serious consideration.
The final reason for not changing the date has much more validity. Australians love their public holidays, especially when they can be morphed into one of our famous long weekends. I see nothing wrong with this — I think if we worked less, consumed less, and enjoyed our environment and each other more we would all be much happier, and maybe, just maybe our productivity would benefit from our happiness. It is a great time of the year for a public holiday. It marks the end of the time when most Australians take their annual holidays. It certainly marks the end of the school holidays, so the current date serves as a last opportunity for working parents to spend some joyous time with their children. It is high summer — it is the perfect time for Australians to enjoy what so many of us love best — sun, sea, surf and sand. I can understand an extraordinarily strong resistance to changing that and swapping it for a date in late autumn or winter is a crazy idea. I don’t believe we have to. If we were to move the holiday, a week or less to the first weekend in February, we could equally celebrate our summer culture, take a last opportunity to spend quality time with families before the start of the school year and avoid celebrating on what is a painful day for our indigenous people. January 26 could and should continue to be marked, not necessarily with a public holiday and certainly not with festivities but perhaps with events and ceremonies of quiet reflection — a bit the way November 11 is observed in Australia — a day of remembrance for all the harm done as a result of the arrival of that First Fleet and a day of resolve to make a new and better future.
Perhaps then, this precious time of high summer can become a time of pride in, and celebration of, this country we are lucky to call home.
