The Albanese government and its agencies spent $453,000 on welcomes in the last two years

The ritual, which treats millions of Australians as strangers to the country they were born in, has become a racket worth millions of dollars for race warriors.

Now we know for sure what a fraud these welcomes to country are.

Stop press: the activists welcoming us to our own country are doing it for the cash.

We’re talking about fake welcomes but real money – a race racket now worth millions of dollars.

Don’t buy the spin.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party says in its Reconciliation Action Plan that we need these welcome ceremonies to “demonstrate respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples”, and Albanese himself last year claimed “it costs nothing to show respect”.

Welcome to country ceremonies are a fraud. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

But that’s sure not the case with these welcomes to country, invented in 1976 by television presenter Ernie Dingo and musician Richard Walley, and often performed now by urban activists.

It turns out that Albanese’s government and its agencies in fact spent $453,000 on welcomes in the last two years, according to Freedom of Information records obtained by federal Liberal MP James Stevens.

What a waste, but the worst of it is that this big cash giveaway – around $1266 per ceremony – is just a fraction of the full cost of this divisive ritual, which treats millions of Australians as strangers to the country they were born in.

As strangers even to the soil in which many of us have buried our parents.

Add, for instance, the welcomes paid for by every city council.

Brisbane alone spent $135,000 in these past two years.

Activists welcoming us to our own country are doing it for the cash. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

In fact, many of our other more than 500 councils and shires around Australia also pay for welcome ceremonies.

Melbourne’s ultra-woke Moreland, Port Phillip and Yarra councils were already each spending around $11,000 of taxpayers money on welcomes in 2011 and 2012, and even the tiny Harvey Shire in Western Australia was recently spending more than $6000 a year.

And we’re still not even close to the full cost.

Businesses and schools also pay activists to welcome the rest of us, as do universities and sporting codes – the AFL is hooked on the ritual – plus woke associations and hospitals.

Some people pay extra for frills.

SBS hired a “loreman” to not only perform a welcome a welcome at its Artarmon headquarters, but also a “smoking” of every floor “to help cleanse away the past few years”.

One Aboriginal corporation even charged $2000 for a ceremony so a NSW surf life saving club could use its local beach for four events, including a Nippers program.

So this is big business for some activists.

In Melbourne, for instance, Colin Hunter – who identifies as a Wurrundjeri elder – has been paid to welcome us at AFL finals and the Melbourne Cup, but he’s also done the job for a very long list of clients, including the Melbourne Central shopping centre, Berry Street child services, Stonnington council, the Hawthorn Bowling Club, Swinburne University of Technology, and the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.

No job seems too small or peripheral.

Hunter has also performed welcomes for the Australian Society of Archivists, the Atlantic Fellows for Social Equity and even the Preston Bullants Junior Football Club.

Meanwhile, Ian Hunter, who also identifies as a Wurrundjeri elder despite also having Scottish ancestry, has done welcomes for Telstra, Monash council, the Australian Physiotherapy Association, Berwick College and many others.

That’s not to say anyone has acted unlawfully by taking advantage of these woke rituals.

But all these welcomes around Australia add up to more than a mountain of money that could have been better spent on getting young Aboriginal children a good schooling, rather than on activists pandering to middle-class whites after some collective feel-good.

It also adds up to too many welcomes to mean anything genuine.

How many times must an Australian be welcomed to their own country before the whole thing sounds as fake as Bruce Pascoe? Three? Ten? Twenty?

How do these welcomes work? Is a welcome to the MCG valid only for one game? Does a welcome to country at our federal parliament expire after three years?

A true welcome to our country can’t be so temporary, surely.

But maybe they must be, to help some race warriors turn a buck.

They need the repeat business.

Of course, I could be unfair to say these welcomes are just for the money.

So let me suggest some transparency to clear the air.

Let every welcome to country start with an acknowledgment of how much the welcomer got to give it: “I acknowledge the $1500 I was paid …”

Then we’ll at least know if their welcome comes from the heart or the wallet.

We’ll know if we’re welcomed as fellow Australians or just more customers.

Originally published as The Albanese government and its agencies spent $453,000 on welcomes in the last two years