Caleb Bond: Moving Triple J Hottest 100 from ‘Invasion Day’ won’t make an iota of difference to the plight of Aboriginal people
MOVING the Triple J Hottest 100 from ‘Invasion Day’ won’t make any difference to the plight of Aboriginal people, writes Caleb Bond.
IF you listened to some sections of the media, you would think Australia was a backwards hellhole.
We are apparently rife with all manner of ghastly attitudes. We are racists, bigots and xenophobes. Our racism runs so deep that we cannot even see it.
Our country was supposedly built on hatred. If aliens tuned into the ABC they might think we were Saudi Arabia.
So quelle surprise when it was this week revealed Triple J — the ABC’s youth radio network — was considering moving its customary Hottest 100 music countdown from Australia Day, or “Invasion Day” as it is written in the politically correct handbook.
Some believe the national day of celebration marks the “invasion” of Australia and downfall of Aboriginal culture. Moving a radio show would apparently be some great step towards us holding hands and all chanting “kumbaya”.
You see, Australia Day celebrates British settlement. It is an indisputable fact that Australia is only the successful and world-beating nation that it is because the British colonised and developed. If it weren’t the British, it would have been the Dutch or some other empire. This land was being colonised in any case.
Is that necessarily something to be ashamed of? I played no part in the settlement of this country, but you and I reap the benefits of it every day.
Anyone who cannot come to terms with the fact that Australia was at one point colonised is most welcome to move somewhere with no history of invasion or settlement. But if you trace back the history of every country we know today, it will have all started with a different civilisation taking over.
We must acknowledge that atrocities were committed upon our Aboriginal population, but we must not fool ourselves into thinking that the vast majority of our history is bad.
It is this black armband view of history that a small but vocal minority of people — mostly guilt-ridden white folk — subscribe to. They are desperate to slur our nation as racist at every turn and if you don’t agree with them then you must be racist, too.
If Australia were a racist country, we would have all swept the recent incident of a woman throwing a banana at Eddie Betts under the carpet.
Instead, the whole nation noted how stupid this woman was. The Advertiser dedicated five pages and an opinion column to it on the following Monday and we continued reporting on it for the rest of the week.
Triple J rightfully buckled to public pressure and announced on Tuesday afternoon that the Hottest 100 would remain on Australia Day in 2017, but they did not rule out a change in the future.
The great tragedy is that while we all get caught up in symbolism that makes little practical difference to anyone’s life, there are disgraceful instances of disadvantage in Aboriginal communities that get ignored.
It is so easy and convenient for the Twitterati to jump online and punch out 140 characters on how Aboriginals are so badly mistreated. But are they getting outraged about the fact that the average Aborigine will die a decade earlier than me?
Are they making a fuss about the fact that Aboriginal women are 34 times more likely than other women to be hospitalised for domestic violence related injuries?
Or that Aboriginal children are seven times more likely to be abused?
The Australian cartoonist Bill Leak tried to raise it in a recent controversial cartoon, but all the usual types shouted him down as racist.
They love to talk about fashionable issues like Australia Day and constitutional recognition which don’t require any effort, but they won’t touch the real issues that make some Aboriginal’s lives a misery every day.
Does the Left really care about the welfare of our indigenous population or is it just another opportunity to pat themselves on the back for being so virtuous?