Andrew Bolt: Time to ditch the crazy obsession with the race of some long-dead ancestors

One day most Australians may be able to claim some Aboriginal forebear among their hundreds of European or Asian ancestors, but so what? People can call themselves what they like but Australia’s problem now is paying for their choices.

It’s a story of our sorry times. A council on Melbourne’s northeastern fringe decided to buy into this “reconciliation” racket by renaming a local park.

It wasn’t enough that the council itself has an Aboriginal name – Nillumbik. A local park had to have one, too.

“Civic park” was just too colonial, so the council voted to change its name to “Kirrip”. That’s a Wurundjeri name meaning “friend”, a cute gesture.

But it’s also ultimately meaningless. Wurundjeri is listed as an extinct language by the Endangered Languages Project, and just 0.6 per cent of locals identify as Aboriginal under our increasingly absurd definition.

But the name is not meaningless to the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation.

It wasn’t enough that the council itself has an Aboriginal name – Nillumbik. A local park had to have one, too. Picture: Hamish Blair

Forget all this “friend” stuff. There’s money in wiping English words from our map, and the minutes of the latest Nillumbik Shire Council meeting explains how much. The council had decided to get the corporation’s permission to use “kirrip”, and was billed $550 plus GST for “word translation and approval”.

An English word would be free.

But this one-off fee was just the start. The council minutes adds: “usage fees for ongoing use of a name will be $3500 plus GST”.

What? Ongoing? That much, for using a name as a gesture of friendship? And who gets it exactly? How many Wurundjeri and Woi-wurrung descendants actually have European ancestry as well, and lots of it? Why is their association entitled to a fee for a word from a language none speak conversationally, and many of their ancestors never spoke at all?

I have no problem with people calling themselves whatever they like. Australia’s problem now is paying for their choices.

Tanya Plibersek listened to 17 or 18 dissidents, including one claiming to be a local elder based on her descent from a single Aboriginal ancestor born in the 1820s. Picture: Gaye Gerard

Take the people identifying as Aboriginal who persuaded federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to block a $1bn gold mine in NSW, even though the local traditional owners said there was nothing sacred about the site to justify a ban.

Plibersek, though, listened to 17 or 18 dissidents, including one claiming to be a local elder based on her descent from a single Aboriginal ancestor born in the 1820s.

This is getting absurd, especially as we continue to inter-marry. One day most Australians may be able to claim some Aboriginal forebear from centuries earlier, among their hundreds of European or Asian ancestors, but so what?

Time we ditched this crazy obsession with the race of some of our long-dead ancestors and got on with just mucking about together.

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Time to ditch the crazy obsession with the race of some long-dead ancestors