Last Saturday, 20,000 Victorians marched in Melbourne’s CBD in the latest protest over the Andrews government’s pandemic measures. The protesters, The Age reported, were “colourful, vocal but peaceful”. Just as they were the weekend before when 100,000 of them lined the city’s streets.
Noting the media’s tendency to focus disproportionately on fringe elements, the newspaper’s veteran crime reporter and author John Silvester pointed out what many commentators had ignored. “This disguises the fact that many who have taken to the street are rational, law-abiding people, angry at lockdowns, concerned at the erosion of civil liberties and tired of feeling their views don’t matter,” he wrote last week.
But for Sydney Morning Herald columnist and chair of the Australian Republic Movement, Peter FitzSimons, it was plebeian vulgarity at its worst. Not only were the demonstrators “low-minded” and “driven by selfishness alone,” he tweeted on Saturday, but they also had the temerity to appropriate colours he considers his own. “As one who wrote a book on Eureka, I say the mighty Eureka flag does not belong in that collection of assorted nutters,” he indignantly proclaimed. “Eureka was about collective action of high-minded people for the greater good of all.”
As one who wrote a book on Eureka, I say the mighty Eureka flag does not belong in that collection of assorted nutters.
— Peter FitzSimons (@Peter_Fitz) November 27, 2021
Eureka was about collective action of high-minded people for the greater good of all.
These protests are low-minded, driven by selfishness alone.#auspolhttps://t.co/UDYwLdJxos
As readers familiar with Fitz-prose know, the phrase “As one who” is a preface to his incessant reminders that he is a man of letters. A few examples from his column will suffice:
“As one who … has delved deeply into five battles of World War I” / “As one who releases a book on General Sir John Monash on Tuesday” / “As one who has written books about all three campaigns” / “As one who had written a book on the subject of the Diggers’ battle at Villers-Bretonneux” / “As one who recently released a book on that battle” / “As one who has written 10 books on Australia’s military actions” / “As one who has … done books covering the battles of Fromelles, Pozieres …” / “As one who penned a weighty tome six years ago, entitled Eureka, The Unfinished Revolution” / “As one who has been touring our nation’s capitals in the past week on book promotion duties”/ “As one who did an in-depth story on this as a guest reporter for the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent”.
But back to the flag. Unlike FitzSimons, I do not claim expert knowledge of the Eureka Rebellion. I know little more about its background other than what I was taught at school 40 years ago. Rudimentary as my understanding is, I know it is cited as an example of the working class rebelling against government oppression, notwithstanding that some historians question that interpretation.
What is not in issue is that days before the uprising culminated in mass slaughter, the Irish-born Peter Lalor delivered his famous Bakery Hill speech in which he urged the rebel miners to “fight to defend our rights and liberties.” Likewise, the “freedom protests” of late have demanded the same in the wake of what has been the biggest restriction of civil liberties in Victoria post-WWII.
Yet FitzSimons maintains there is no resemblance between the “high-minded” protests of 1854 and the “low-minded” ones of recent weeks. Presumably, he would also argue that if Lalor were alive today, he would say the same when he addressed the workers.
Lalor: Comrades, before I get to the pandemic bill, can I ask you to reflect on our good fortune in having the Andrews government watch over us during these last two years?
Workers: (Cheering)
Lalor: And is it not reassuring that only two-thirds of Covid deaths in Australia occurred in Victoria?
Workers: It is!
Lalor: And are we Melburnians bothered in the least that our government imposed the longest cumulative lockdown of any city in the world?
Workers: No!
Lalor: And do you support the perpetual mandating of vaccine passports, despite esteemed epidemiologists saying there is no basis for this once vaccination levels reach a certain percentage?
Workers: We do!
Lalor: Did you not thrill with delight and admiration when the leader of our state declared that the unvaccinated would be shunned from society, and I quote: “Whether it’s a bookshop, a shoe shop, a pub, cafe, a restaurant, the MCG, the list goes on and on”?
Workers: We did!
Lalor: What do you say of this pandemic bill that not only invests broad powers in public servants to detain people on public health grounds, but also provides no avenue for an independent agency to review the merits of that decision?
Workers: Yay!
Lalor: Answer me this: do we want less or more government regulation of our lives?
Workers: More!
Lalor: And is it not a benevolent and wise government that seeks to imprison people for up to two years for so-called” egregious and deliberate” breaches of public health orders?
Workers: It is!
Lalor: And does it bother you one iota to see police arrest and handcuff a pregnant mother in her own home and in the presence of her young family?
Workers: No!
Lalor: Do you trust this government with these unprecedented powers, even though it suffers collective amnesia when ministers are asked who made crucial decisions that led to the deaths of hundreds?
Workers: Absolutely!
Lalor: Will you swear by the Southern Cross to stand by Dan and to surrender to your rights and liberties to him?
Workers: We will!
In short, the right to display the Eureka flag as a symbol protest depends on whether the cause in question has FitzSimon’s approval. For example, in 2018 he fulminated at a federal code that prohibited the display of any union logos or slogans on building sites that implied membership of the organisation was necessary to work on government-funded projects. This included the Eureka flag, which for decades has been flown by the militant Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union.
“Friends, I ask you, does it get any more un-Australian than that – 163 years on from the most inspiring event in our history, of individuals rising against an unfair government, we have a modern government attempting to ban the individual’s right to display the very symbol of that struggle,” he wrote.
In 2019 FitzSimons reverently quoted the Ballarat Reform League’s resolution in the lead-up to the Eureka Rebellion. “For the central and sacred notion of the League is pushed in the motion they pass: ‘The people are the only legitimate source of all political power.’ Rah!” Except, he should have added, if they are opposed to a left-wing government, in which case they are motivated entirely by selfish interests and thus have no legitimacy.
But the most amusing and ironic of them all is FitzSimons’s favourably quoting one Thomas Kennedy who implored the Eureka rebels to stand firm. “The press has called us demagogues who must be put down,” said Kennedy. Much the same as a certain commentator today contemptuously referring to lawful demonstrators as “low-minded,” perhaps?
Despite his claims otherwise, FitzSimons is not the moral arbiter of who has the right to display the Eureka flag. As a Sydney Morning Herald contributor noted in 2013 in a review of ‘Eureka: The Unfinished Revolution’, FitzSimons has a “tendency to play fast and loose with the historical record”. As one who has long suffered his scribblings, I know that only too well.
More Coverage
Risk that puberty blockers are a trap, not a release, for children
We need a national inquiry into the use of puberty blockers in children.
We need better tech to meet the threat of terrorism
All of the civil agencies who need to play a part in fighting the anti-Semitism and Islamophobic threat are not properly funded to undertake modernisation rapidly.