Piers Akerman: People seeking to change Australia Day date display hatred of our country
THIS week the great majority of Australians, including those who identify as Aboriginal, will celebrate the end of the Stone Age on this continent. A handful of backward progressives will mount a campaign against Australia Day, Piers Akerman writes.
Opinion
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THIS week the great majority of Australians, including those who identify as Aboriginal, will celebrate the end of the Stone Age on this continent.
A handful of backward progressives, chiefly the Greens and those employed by the ABC and Fairfax, will mount a campaign against this celebration. In their narrative, the dawning of modern civilisation in Australia brought about an unmitigated tragedy for which we all must admit responsibility and keep paying atonement.
This is sheer lunacy, but the progressives are renowned for fighting change. In the US, for example, it was the Democrats, not the Republicans, who fought to keep blacks enslaved.
Similarly here, it was Labor that kept the White Australia policy alive well into the latter half of last century.
Now we find that some musicians are upset because Australian Conservative Party leader Senator Cory Bernardi has composed a list of 10 songs and put it before the people.
It includes Men at Work’s Down Under, Cold Chisel’s Khe Sanh, John Farnham’s You’re The Voice, Icehouse’s Great Southern Land, Peter Allen’s I Still Call Australia Home, Judith Durham, Russell Hitchcock and Yunupingu’s I Am Australian, Goanna’s Solid Rock and Slim Dusty’s A Pub With No Beer.
Tim Rogers, of You Am I, Savage Garden’s Darren Hayes, Men at Work, Jimmy Barnes, Powderfinger, The Hilltop Hoods and Icehouse have all called for their songs to be removed. Their complaints remind us how stupid artists can be when they enter the realms of politics.
Recall all those idiots in bell-bottom trousers who gave Gough Whitlam their grinning support, or those who flocked to Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard in open-mouthed awe?
Or how about all the Hollywood-lites who said they would flee the US if Donald Trump was elected? With the US stock market booming, all they want to do now is check their bitcoin balances and their share portfolios — when they aren’t finding something new in black to wear as a protest against that great Democrat fundraiser Harvey Weinstein.
ABC presenter Kim Landers sounded shocked when Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion told her on Friday that not one Aboriginal figure had raised the issue of changing the date of Australia Day with him.
“So not a single indigenous person has ever expressed to you, as the Indigenous Affairs Minister, that they want the date changed,” she asked incredulously.
“That’s correct, that’s correct. Absolutely correct,” Mr Scullion said.
“We have NAIDOC Week, we have Sorry Day, we have Reconciliation Week, we have Mabo Day. If you want to divide the nation, this is how we go down that line.”
But those who want to change the date aren’t really interested in what Aboriginals actually think, they’re into the virtue signalling that plays so well to inner-urban audiences where flying the Aboriginal flag signifies solidarity with something — just not the real issues that beset communities in remote areas of the nation.
They’re the ones who have so readily shown their abject dopiness by embracing the ersatz Welcome to Country and smoking ceremonies, which are now mandated at civil ceremonies despite the fact they are fabrications.
The popular Aboriginal entertainer Ernie Dingo and his collaborator Richard Walley put the welcome ceremony together at the request of the federal government for visiting troupes of Pacific dancers. Mr Dingo and Dr Walley said dancers from New Zealand and the Cook Islands refused to perform unless they were officially welcomed, because they believed it would be culturally wrong.
Both men agree that their fabricated ceremony would be devalued if it became mandatory — as it has.
As Aboriginal politician Bess Price noted bluntly: “All the Welcome to Country, all the smoking ceremonies and all the made-up bullshit rituals about paying our respects to elders past and present is just one big lie!
“Shame, shame, shame!”
Both Mrs Price and her daughter, Alice Springs councillor Jacinta Price, have been targeted on social media since she helped former federal Labor leader Mark Latham launch a “Save Australia Day” ad campaign.
Using the same sort of aggressive, abusive language as some of the musicians who want Senator Bernardi to stop mentioning their music, low-life trolls have posted bullying comments about the brave Price women.
By any measure Australia is a fortunate country.
We have not had the heartbreak of division that led to civil wars in other great democracies.
This is not to ignore the plight of the many Australians who live in squalor, despite the billions ($33 billion on Aboriginal welfare alone) spent annually. But our nation is a beacon for millions trapped in totalitarian nations, particularly those ruled by Islamist despots.
Those seeking to change the date of Australia Day aren’t bent on making things better for those less well off. They are displaying their hatred of Australia.
They are still living in the Stone Age.