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.
