Acknowledgement of country and welcome to country announcements are a politically correct way of saying ‘go back to where you came from’
Who decided it was okay to tell migrants plus every born and bred Australian who is not Indigenous that they need to be welcomed to their own country?
Rita Panahi
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At best welcome to country ceremonies are an incoherent, tokenistic farce, at worst they are a humiliation ritual to delegitimise modern-day Australia and cast the overwhelming majority of its people as uninvited interlopers.
No wonder so many Australians are thoroughly fed up with being forced to participate in this divisive ritual.
A number of polls in recent days demonstrate the depth of opposition to formalities that are considered sacrosanct by the race-obsessed activist, media and political class.
An online poll of more than 160,000 respondents on news.com.au – a site that panders to the Left and has campaigned to change the date of Australia Day – showed that a whopping nine in 10 Australians wanted to see an end to or less welcome to country ceremonies (66 per cent want to see an end to all WTC ceremonies while 23 per cent want to see fewer).
Only three per cent thought we should have more and 8 per cent thought we have the right amount.
In the Herald Sun, an online poll showed that 83 per cent of respondents thought WTC ceremonies were inappropriate at sporting events, Anzac Day and work meetings.
In the Daily Telegraph and the Courier-Mail 72 per cent of respondents said that a WTC should not be performed at all during Magic Round with only 3 per cent wanting to see the ceremony across all four days of NRL games.
As a migrant I’ve long argued that acknowledgement of country and welcome to country announcements are a politically correct way of saying “go back to where you came from” as are phrases such as “always was, always will be Aboriginal land”.
Who decided it was okay to tell migrants plus every born and bred Australian who is not Indigenous that they need to be welcomed to their own country?
That due to their ancestry they are not entitled to see Australia as truly theirs, after all no one needs to be welcomed to their own home.
It’s time for the race obsessed to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that WTC ceremonies along with acknowledgement of country announcements are a toxic, unpopular ritual masquerading as reconciliation.
They reinforce a sense of “us” versus “them,” and separates us by an attribute beyond our control, our ancestry.
It’s precisely the type of racial privilege that Australians rejected during the Voice referendum.
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