David Penberthy: Beware the well-meaning non-representative Leftie
YARRA Council’s impertinent decision to can Australia Day delivered a gift to the Right and likely hardened people’s hearts on the reconciliation cause, writes David Penberthy.
NEWSPAPER columnists operate in a permanent state of mild insecurity, hoping an issue or event will come along to afford them 900 easy, indignant words to satisfy that ever-looming deadline.
There is nothing worse than a slow news week; conversely, there is nothing better than having an issue land in your lap that guarantees popular outrage.
To that end, Australia’s conservative columnists were this week awarded a rostered day off, courtesy of the crazy conduct of Melbourne’s Yarra Council. The council’s decision to ban Australia Day was the kind of unilateral PC conceit that does nothing but provide further ammunition to Australia’s loudest conservative voices. In cricketing parlance, it was a rank full toss pitched outside off, belted to the boundary, with the right-wing columnists filing early copy and hitting the pub by lunchtime to talk about how unfair everyone’s being to Donald Trump, simply because he sticks up for Nazis.
I only watched a few minutes of Four Corners’ investigation into factionalism within the Australian Greens on Monday night, as it seemed long enough to get the general point. My chief take-out from the program was how similar these Greens activists are to American born-again Christians with that glazed, 1000-yard stare that belongs to those who are convinced of their righteousness. I was thinking about these funny hippies on Wednesday when I interviewed the woman from the Yarra Council who moved the motion that bans any celebration or commemoration of Australia Day, save for a small indigenous smoking ceremony on January 26 to observe that moment of unadorned national shame.
I am not trying to be rude about Councillor Mi-Li Chen Yi Mei, as she is clearly a well-meaning and big-hearted person. The problem is, she is so well-meaning and big-hearted that she’s unable to see that her utterly impertinent actions serve only to alienate and anger a majority of Australians, while providing a mountain of cannon-fodder for those on the Right.
There are two key intellectual flaws with the Left’s critique of Australia Day in its current January 26 configuration. The first is that it ignores the fact that the day can be used, and indeed is used, as a chance to recognise past wrongs towards indigenous Australians. The second is that changing the date of Australia Day would do nothing to satisfy indigenous people who have a general gripe with Australia that goes beyond the mere question of a date, but to broader issues such as the absence of a New Zealand-style treaty (with recompense) between white and black Australians, or the refusal of Canberra to guarantee a set number of indigenous voices in the Parliament, or to restart an old organisation such as ATSIC to deliver a form of indigenous governance. The entire debate about the date seems pointless, given that bad things happened on plenty of other days aside from January 26, and the list of concerns by indigenous people goes well beyond that date anyway.
The real problem with Yarra Council and its ilk is one of breathtaking impertinence. When we spoke to Councillor Mi-Li Chen we asked her on what basis the council had decided it had grounds to act against Australia Day. The full extent of the research was an online survey of 88 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, 82 per cent of whom supported council’s push to change the date, Another 281 people were polled in separate street survey, with 45.9 per cent agreeing council should support the campaign.
This doesn’t strike me as rigorous research but the kind of thing your kid would do for a year nine social studies assignment. It is certainly not an indicative and scientific gauge of sentiment in a 90,000 strong local government area.
In her well-meaning and massively flawed way, Councillor Mi-Li Chen explained that it didn’t really matter if most people in the council area didn’t support what the council was doing. She admitted that it would be unpopular, but insisted that this wasn’t really the point.
“It’s important to realise that it takes a little courage to change and make reform,” she said.
Wow. Therein lies the problem. The perverse idea that “courage” can rightly trump democracy, and that the will of the mainstream should be ignored, or not properly measured, letting a clique of council unknowns that’s as diverse as the Q&A audience take the red pen to a day of a national significance. This conduct is made more breathtaking when you consider the chief role of local government is local service delivery, not re-imagining the nation.
The Mi-Li Chens of this world and every other non-representative council leftie of a similar bent need to recognise one thing. They are the best friends Andrew Bolts and Rita Panahis will ever have.
With their studied indifference to mainstream sentiment, they reach so far beyond public opinion on issues such as Australia Day that they harden people’s hearts to the broader and important cause of reconciliation, of a yes vote in the Recognise campaign, of serious thought and effort on the question of indigenous poverty and deprivation.
It is tokenistic, undergraduate nonsense, and it really annoys people, as it has at its heart a presumption that anyone who does enjoy Australia Day is a bigot. It’s the kind of approach that drives people in the directions of the Trumps and the Hansons, fed up as they are with having decisions made on their behalf, by people who are so ideologically pure that they wouldn’t dare discuss these things first with the great unwashed.