Peta Credlin: Why I’m proud to be Australian and reject attempts to reshape our history as one of shame

There are wounds and triumphs in our history, but it’s the country we are now that matters, and there’s so much more to celebrate than to lament, writes Peta Credlin.

There is something very special about the feeling you get when you fly home from overseas and the wheels touch down in Australia.

Deep down in all of us, we know that to live here is to have won the lottery of life. That’s not to say we don’t recognise that there are people doing it tough, and that life isn’t perfect, but you would be a fool to think there’s anywhere better than this old and ancient continent on which we have built one of the fairest, most tolerant and prosperous democracies on earth.

I grew up in the sunburnt Mallee Region of Victoria, in a small country town – like so many across this country – where everyone knows your name and has your back. Where summer meant fierce northerlys and days of 40 degrees plus. And where, after years of drought, the sweet smell of rain on parched ground brought adult men to tears. It was here I learnt that resilience was to be admired, that hard times could be survived if we looked after each other, and that everyone deserved a ‘fair go.’ I grew up knowing that without farmers we didn’t eat and that without people who worked with their hands, not much got done. With a dad that wore overalls to work and who left school before he was a teenager, I learnt never to judge a book by its cover.

Sky News commentator Peta Credlin.

The Australia I love is a land of spectacular natural beauty and extremes. Of warm and genuine people, especially in the bush. I’ve often thought about the contrast that the overseas visitor must come up against between our animals that all want to kill you and our people that are quick to treat a stranger like family. We’re a nation where our history is full of examples where we’ve taken on a fight and won it against the odds. Where we have been brave or stood against the tide; where we have rejected the established view and made our own way. We are a country of inventors, pioneers, storytellers, travellers, volunteers, builders, larrikins and dreamers. Not perfect by any stretch, and sometimes I fear, better in the past than we are today – about which I hope I am wrong.

Unlike so many other nations, we were not born of civil war or conflict. That doesn’t mean there aren’t wounds as well as triumphs in our history – of course there are. But like so many everyday Australians, I reject recent attempts to try and reshape our history as one of shame. Being taught to loathe my country would be akin to rejecting my family because being an Australian is such a huge part of who I am. In the end, it’s the country we are now that matters, and there’s so much more to celebrate than to lament, as every recent migrant – who voted with their feet – will tell you.

Part of the ‘glue’ that holds a successful multicultural nation together is a collective love of country and we jeopardise this with wrongheaded self-hate, particularly when pushed by our political leaders and elites, because it risks our unity. It’s why this current resurgence in national pride post the Voice referendum defeat, where we all recognised the importance of our Indigenous foundations but rejected any attempt to turn that into race-based separatism, gives me hope that we have turned a corner in our history. Less collective punishment over the past and more determination to look to the future because we face a world more uncertain than ever and need to stand together.

Without a hint of jingoism and without US-style demands for patriotic conformity, we have built a country where – for the most part – citizens have an instinctive pride in the way we look out for each other, in all our diversity. We must protect that with eternal vigilance, especially against the recent resurgence of the scourge of anti-Semitism.

Perhaps it’s a cliche to say that what unites us is more important than anything that divides, but I’m convinced that it’s true. On this Australia Day, I doubt I am alone in thinking I owe my country more than it could ever owe me.

Peta Credlin is a political commentator on Sky News.

Originally published as Peta Credlin: Why I’m proud to be Australian and reject attempts to reshape our history as one of shame