For me, yesterday was just a public holiday but if I have to attach any meaning to it, it's not about pride in country (though I do love living here, having it as my home, and feel very fortunate after having lived in other parts of the world: London, Istanbul and Osaka.)
I am not one of the people inclined to put the flag anywhere (don't have one, the only 'flag' I have is a Ford one that says Go Cats!) and I look down my nose at people who do.
Yesterday's Cinderella drama was not a good look. Possibly the AFP made it all look much worse, and the sight of Julia Gillard clinging to a bloke and being dragged along was a fucking disgrace. Makes it look like she was escaping savages who wanted to throw her in a pot; makes it look like she couldn't walk or get herself to her car; makes it look like she's a weak woman.
The best thing she could do would be to go and get her shoe back, have a chat and connect with her people. Otherwise it just looks like she's scared, snobby and racist.
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A few years ago we visited the old Parliament House. I took my kids and walked to the tent embassy and talked to a man named Robbie who was sitting at the fire there. He was polite, fascinating and peaceful but after 40 years I'd be getting a bit shitty too.
Why can't we get it right? Aboriginal Australians do have something to protest about.
Suicides are twice the national average, murders are six times as high and Aborigines are 11 times more likely to be imprisoned than other Australians. Most live on welfare and 60 per cent of Aboriginal pupils do not finish high school and only 12 per cent go on to some form of higher education. [from http://www.theage.com.au/national/worlds-press-compares-julia-gillard-to-cinderella-and-elvis-how-the-international-media-reported-the-prime-ministers-dramatic-restaurant-exit-20120127-1qkd8.html]
So yeah. Yesterday. Day of Shame, really. Didn't start so well. I was told 'Happy Australia Day' by the small boy who lives with me and I turned on him and explained to him why I found that kind of offensive. I tried to talk about the history, the way that for some it's not a day of pride or magic, how bogans and rednecks have appropriated the flag and turned it into something emotive. But he didn't get it, just like he doesn't get it when I go for the Indians in cricket, or the Pakistanis. Why my default setting is not to everyone and everything Australian.
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I have offended people in the past (my father, a crush) at the football when I refused to stand for the National Anthem. Even at twenty I was rebelling against this thing called Nationalism. I just don't get it. Maybe it's a male-driven thing, because without it, you don't get soldiers, and without soldiers, you don't get war. And we all know war is important.
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I do have complaints about the new Vegemite though. Anyone else noticed the gloss and melt of it? Not happy. It's un-Australian.
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UPDATE: they are holding onto the shoe. So she should go and have a chat, give them the other so they have the pair to sell on ebay, or can sell separately and make double the money.
Love it.
I have to say that after what's gone on in Europe and America recently, the way I'm seeing media talk up how raging and violent and riotous this particular "mob" was is a bit ugly.
I agree that the visuals (especially) don't look good for Gillard, but I'm trying to consider this in context and from all perspectives. I would guess that she wouldn't have known exactly what was going on outside and just trusted that her professional security detail knew what they were doing. Everything else would have been done under adrenaline.
As for Abbott, I see him talking about how much aborigines gained from the wonderful Rudd apology. Was he always such a fan of the apology? I might be wrong, but I didn't think so.
Why can't we get it right?
To be honest, I think sometimes a part of the problem is a narrow focus on this statistical gap. People look at it and think "how do we fix the aboriginal problem" and it leads them into this thinking that the problem is linked to the nature of aboriginal people. Like, they see a statistic about aborigines having an increased problem with alcohol and they think that it's being aboriginal that causes you to be more susceptible to becoming a drunk. But you can't "fix" aborigines because there's nothing wrong with them to fix. In my experience, the problem is more that aborigines are more likely to be born into circumstances of disadvantage and if you're not attacking that root problem you're just treating the symptoms. To do that, you're probably going to have to take a radically different approach to poverty, including rural poverty; and I suspect that that is going to require doing things far outside the scope of the department of aboriginal affairs.
Also, there's the question of corruption, waste, mismanagement, cronyism, self-interest and incompetence that you get with any bureaucracy and the manner in which every change of government brings a new direction, resulting in no plan every progressing more than a few steps before everything changes. Of course, having experience with the education department, you're probably familiar with a lot of this.
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Also, not a fan of flags or anthems.
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The last time I watched an international gymnastics event on the telly, I got really pissy that they omitted a whole bunch of fantastic performances in order to show extensive footage of the Australians sitting around looking nervous. And all the commentators could talk about was "the Australian's chances". Christ, that sort of thing annoys me.
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Haven't seen new vegemite.
Oh, and I left in-fighting and factionalism out of my critique of bureaucracy.
I know Alex, I do know the answer to 'why can't we get it right' it was more rhetorical, but I agree with everything you listed.
I hope you didn't think I meant 'why can't the paternalistic government/imperialist whitey settlers/invaders *fix* the *problem*' because that's not what my position is.
But isn't the sitch in Canada better than here? Is it better in NZ? I am not really up on it all, and quite feebly inarticulate.
I just wish for something different I suppose and I am too disillusioned with politics and the grinding of the world mechanism to have much hope for anything or anybody on a large scale. So I shut it all out, close my eyes, or narrow them so I can only see what's right in front of me, and keep happy that way. But sometimes the shit leaks in, and I get mad.
But isn't the sitch in Canada better than here? Is it better in NZ? I am not really up on it all, and quite feebly inarticulate.
I'm not an expert, but last I heard, they both still had their fair share of problems.
I hope you didn't think I meant 'why can't the paternalistic government/imperialist whitey settlers/invaders *fix* the *problem*' because that's not what my position is.
No, I didn't assume that, but I think it raises an interesting point. I get the feeling that there's pretty much a consensus that progress can't be made unless government works with aboriginal Australia. But the question really is how you do this. Over and over again I heard it growing up, "Fuckin' coons want this, fuckin' coons want that, fuckin' coons don't know what they want". And I think this reflects a strange misconception that some people have of aboriginal Australia as a single organism. Mostly, I think that when you hear any person claim to be speaking for aboriginal Australia you should react in the same way as when you hear someone claim that they speak for all Australians. Remember, last time Australia was asked to decide on something, we ended up with a hung parliament.
I've heard aboriginal women saying that DOCS is continuing the stolen generation in their communities, while others in the same communities say that there are children who are suffering terribly because social workers won't intervene out of fear of being labelled racist. For all the condemnation of the intervention, it also has its supporters. I've heard arguments that the government needs to work within traditional frameworks while others say that traditional frameworks are outdated and are not appropriate for a people moving forward in the modern world. Largely, I think these things tend to be a question of principle until they start to affect you directly, and then it becomes a question of whether that effect is positive or negative.
Add in the fact that bureaucracies run directly by the people they are supposed to represent are just as susceptible as those run by outsiders to the issues I listed earlier and the problem starts to become diabolical.
Agree to all that Alex, yep.
My comment re NZ and Canada was that I thought they were more progressive (Canada at least) and had made some ground (with self-determination) or had achieved more reconciliation (for want of a better word) - or was that just my imagination? I haven't got time to google.
I appreciate your opinions and knowledge about this. It's interesting.
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