Welcome to Country is not an election issue, so why are we talking about it? I think I know

Tradition turns us into time travellers. It thrusts the past upon us in our daily lives and stretches out into a future we won’t be here to see. It reminds us of all the things that have happened to us, around us, what caused them and teaches us lessons so we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past.

The matriculation traditions here at Oxford are so steeped in history and heavy with duty and responsibility in the pursuit of knowledge, it’s enough to move you to tears like sitting in the Sheldonian Theatre, being admitted to an institution that’s been holding similar ceremonies since the 14th century. Sections in Latin, wearing ridiculous gowns, adhering to rules about covering flesh and carrying your mortarboard and not wearing it until you graduate lest you be fined are all a normal part of the experience but nonetheless comprise an anachronistic spectacle.

Brooke Boney illustration by Aresna Villanueva.Credit:

Anything done more than 50 years ago as normal practice can, objectively and out of context, seem absurd. I think of King Charles’ coronation, draped in animal skins, sitting in a weird chair holding a staff. Or Pope Francis’ funeral. People dressed in black (some in blue) with veils obscuring their grief and a service in a language only a handful of people can speak fluently. Or a Welcome to Country, an ancient practice by which neighbouring tribal groups would welcome one another to the territories within their borders.

It’s not dissimilar from welcoming someone into your home or, in a more hostile dynamic, like passing through customs or border security. If some traditions are sacred and others are silly, who decides? They all serve relatively the same purpose.

In recent days, rather than engage with the very real and serious issues we’re facing internationally or domestically, the political discourse has become captivated by Welcome to Country ceremonies. What this signals to First Nations people is that, in the waning hours of the election campaign, there is a plan to use Indigenous issues to motivate voters.

Who does it serve to diminish our cultural traditions and practices? This isn’t just about Welcome to Country, and we all know that. It’s about finding something for people to feel angry about, something that involves Aboriginal people.

When Peter Dutton declares that the result may be different from what we expect, he’s relying on the idea that those people who are disguising their beliefs are too ashamed to admit them. He’s relying on what’s described in academia as preference falsification, where people tell the polls or their friends they’re going to vote one way because it’s too shameful to admit the truth, or they’re afraid they’re in the minority. They falsify their political preferences to disguise their true thoughts.

This is why it was so unexpected when Donald Trump was elected (twice), why Brexit surprised everyone (including Boris Johnson, apparently) and why the Voice referendum result was more extreme than anticipated. A weak condemnation of the Liberal candidate from Fowler’s racism, followed swiftly by a doubling down on dismantling Aboriginal cultural practices, does nothing to curb racism. It merely signals that if you’re going to be racist, do it in a way that makes it difficult for others to articulate a response.

To then hide behind the idea you’re giving voice to the wishes of the veterans you spoke to is an insult. For anyone to push back on what you’re saying, they’d have to deny the wishes of our respected veterans, which none of us want to do. The sacrifice these men and women make for us to live safe and free lives is something sacred and shouldn’t be taken for granted, nor used in a context to further culture wars. Particularly when those who pushed the conversation about Welcome to Country to the fore were self-identified neo-Nazis, the same ideology that our sons, brothers, fathers and husbands died to defeat.

More than ever, there are lessons we need to hold on to. Whether it’s the lessons about the true human and intergenerational cost of war or the ideology from which they fought so hard to defend us. I’ve travelled to Auschwitz and to Birkenau and there are many lessons you take away from being in a physical space where so much death and destruction has occurred. You wonder how a hatred so pure took hold, you wonder how individuals allowed themselves to feel so much fear that they turned on their own countrymen.

It was nearly two decades ago for me but the man who showed me around at the end of the day said something I’ve never forgotten – this is what happens when one group of people think they’re above another. It’s so simple but it resonated. If we succumb to fear and allow ourselves to indulge in the myth that we’re born better than another person, the results can be catastrophic. He said the reason they take people on these morbid tours is to remind them of what happens when we let these fears take hold and start believing myths about some cultures and ethnicities being more worthy than others.

The individuals who betray their own countrymen to advance themselves will have to answer to their own conscience or when they meet their maker. For the rest of us: please, for the love of everything that makes us human, let us learn the lessons these traditions are trying to teach us.

I don’t care if you vote for Labor, the Greens, the independents or Peter Dutton but at least just be honest about why you’re doing it. Don’t pretend to have moral courage when you’re inciting disdain for those who are the most disadvantaged. You can’t build a future by looking back at the past and trying to rewrite history.

It was Gandhi who said the true measure of any society could be found in how it treated its most vulnerable members. If, during electoral campaigns, someone has to incite disdain for people who are already suffering the most – by almost any measure – you have to question their perception of the depth of their own potential.

Is this really all there is? In a time of great democratic and moral crisis, no big dreams or grand schemes for our future – just double-speak and dog whistling.

Brooke Boney is a Gamilaroi woman and journalist. She is studying a Masters of Public Policy at the University of Oxford. Her first book, All Of It, a collection of essays, has just been published by Allen & Unwin.