David Penberthy: Plibersek school pledge proposal is far from xenophobia
What seemed like a fairly inoffensive suggestion by Tanya Plibersek has lead to a monumental pile-on. If only people would get off Twitter and into real debate, writes David Penberthy.
Rendezview
Don't miss out on the headlines from Rendezview. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The capacity for offence in modern society has been underscored this week by two women with very similar names who were preoccupied by challenges of a very different kind.
The first of them, Anne Frank, was a Jewish girl who spent much of her life hiding from the Gestapo in an attic, diarising the rise of Nazism ahead of her execution in 1945 in the Belsen concentration camp.
At the opposite end of the spectrum of concern, her quasi namesake Ann Francke shot to prominence this week with a public warning about the non-inclusive nature of casual conversations in the modern workplace.
This Ann Francke is the head of Britain’s Chartered Management Institute and in a round of interviews, for which she was widely and unsurprisingly pilloried, she spoke about her concern at the fact men who talked about cricket and football in the workplace were creating a “laddish culture” that would isolate female staff.
If ever there was an example of the modern capacity for outrage over the slightest trifle, this was it.
It did have the added bonus at least of being funny, albeit in a stupid and eye-rolling kind of way.
Speaking as we were of fascism, there was another example this week which showed how even the most progressive and well-meaning people can end up being denounced by the PC Brigade.
The person on the receiving end of the vitriol was Labor’s Tanya Plibersek, normally an absolute pin-up for Australia’s luvvies, someone for whom the Q&A audience reserves the warmest of applause, even before she says anything.
Lumbering herself with the highest degree of difficulty, Plibersek chose the deranged forum of Twitter to announce a policy which would be overwhelmingly applauded by most Australians but was a red rag to a bull to the red-raggers on this form of social media.
Crafted for Australia Day, the shadow education minister suggested the pledge of allegiance taken by new Australian citizens should also be recited by children in Australian schools.
It seemed a sincere attempt to impress upon younger Australians the value of citizenship, which is something so many of us take for granted, but which is cherished by people who have moved here from dysfunctional or impoverished states to grasp a second shot at life.
On Twitter, to hark back to the fascist theme, you would have thought from the reaction that Plibersek had proposed some Down Under reworking of the Hitler Youth.
The criticism she copped ranged from the heavy-hearted admonitions from her journalistic and celebrity fellow travellers who tut-tutted at their beloved Tanya about how uncharacteristic and regrettable the idea was, to full-blown abuse from the more unhinged and feral tweeters.
One of my favourites was from a woman called Celeste Little who revealed the happy news that she is planning a family on account of the Plibersek announcement.
“I know I’m 41 but I am now pondering having a child just so that child can go to school and then also tell Plibersek to f*** off when told to recite the pledge of allegiance,” Ms Little wrote, winning herself 892 likes.
Another woman who gives her name as Bee won 1292 likes by saying: “Could someone please tell @tanyaplibersek that I think someone may have hacked her Twitter account and is tweeting bulls**t about patriotism. The Tanya I know would more likely be tweeting about being good humans not crap about indoctrinating kids and forced patriotism.”
On and on it went, giving these obsessed souls something to do on the long weekend.
I didn’t see too many tweeters who bothered to look at the actual wording of the proposed pledge, which is identical to that taken by new citizens on Australia Day, but here it is:
“I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.”
It is a simple and mundane statement in support of democracy, personal freedom and the rule of law, but in the minds of these maddies on Twitter, we might as well teach the kiddies the Horst Wessel song.
These fascist allusions aren’t some straw man argument, either. If you do a search on the words “Plibersek” and “fascist” on Twitter, you can find dozens of references to her plan as a “fascist” idea, which has the added bonus of being personally insulting to Plibersek, the daughter of migrants from Slovenia, whose citizens were targeted for ethnic cleansing by the Nazis during World War II.
I doubt whether the people who are bagging her would be aware of such a fact of history, or many other facts of history. They occupy the same permanently outraged backwater of Twitter as the likes of Julian Burnside, who has used Nazi allusions to describe Australia’s border protection policies, which however tough they may be are not by my reckoning predicated on the creation of a master race and the systematic eradication of specific ethnic groups.
I guess the ultimate question Plibersek’s detractors were asking is how could anyone love a racist, xenophobic, hateful, patriarchal place like Australia? How could you inflict that on an innocent schoolchild?
Although I suppose if you were to admit that Australia is a pretty damn good place in the international scheme of things, then you’re admitting that perhaps we don’t need a radical revolution after all. And that would never do.
Among all these tweets, one stood out, written by a sheep farmer called John Kelly who sounds like a knockabout bloke and was marvelling at the pile-on.
“Plibersek is trending because Tanya wants the kids to swear allegiance. Once again the Left are eating their own, revealing themselves as self-centred dumb flogs who can’t even recognise the oath as the one immigrants take.”
A pithy observation, and one which suggests there is more wisdom to be gained from swatting flies off a sheep’s bum than sitting around in some Brunswick coffee shop, locked in impassioned, untested agreement with your cloistered mates.