Why the welcome to country is no longer welcome
You asked us what we thought and we told you. And saying no to the voice, no to welcome to country and no to co-sovereignty is not racist; it is, in fact, a vote for equality and unity.
Australia’s history is a rich, fabulous one. Indigenous people and their ancient stories, waves of hardworking gritty migrants, a Westminster parliamentary system forming one of the world’s longest continuous democracies, a stable legal system built on the rule of law and equality before the law, a deep and firm foundation of Christian beliefs overlaid with myriad other faiths too as more and more migrants have made Australia home.
The welcome to country rips up our rich story. It divides the country between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. It excludes the great contributions by waves of millions of migrants.
The welcome to country (delivered by a member of the local Indigenous “mob”) and an acknowledgment of country (delivered by a non-Indigenous person) put race smack-bang into the centre of the public square.
These statements up-end the notion that Australians are equal and displace what should be our firm commitment: always to judge people not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.
The other thing is that no one bothered to ask the people what we thought about these ubiquitous statements. They just started appearing.
Our early history is marked by violence and other shameful ravages too – especially to Indigenous people. Recognising that is a necessary part of our story. However, those who think an acknowledgment of country or a welcome to country is some kind of balm, goodwill gestures, if you like, for these darker chapters are mistaken. Instead, these statements are opening salvos in a much longer game, where the aim is power, not balm. That long game has come full circle in this election.
The voice was Anthony Albanese’s signature policy during the last election campaign. Having failed spectacularly at the 2024 referendum, Penny Wong this week ensured that the spurned voice is chasing the Prime Minister – not quite “dead and buried” as it transpires – into this election. The voice’s various accoutrements, including the increasingly unwelcoming welcome to country, are also causing division.
That said, and putting Albanese to one side, the activists sure were successful – for a while.
It became custom for board meetings, school assemblies, university gatherings, Zoom meetings, Qantas flights to include often droning and multiple acknowledgments of country. At bigger events, even footy games, welcomes to country were demanded by a small group of activists, slotted into schedules by well-meaning white people, paid for by members, taxpayers, shareholders and others who might have no interest in being welcomed to their own country.
Perhaps the activists took mainstream silence to mean mainstream approval, even eager support. In retrospect, saturation imposition of these statements about “country” was critical to softening the political ground for a bigger project that has become obvious only in recent years – the pursuit of co-sovereignty.
Viewed in perspective, “always was, always will be” was infused with political meaning. Similarly, welcomes to country and acknowledgments of country were always laden with express or implied claims of ownership and sovereignty.
Most of us were blissfully unaware of the significance of references to sovereignty, especially as it applied to land. For so long as the people were not asked what they thought, the increasing intrusion of welcomes and acknowledgments to country worked swimmingly as activists laid the groundwork for an ever-increasing series of ambit claims.
From their ivory towers, legal activists sprinkled little seeds of discontent about our current constitutional arrangements. We were told the country was suffering from “a constitutional legitimacy crisis”.
They didn’t ask us what we thought about this, either. Beavering away for years, legal and other activists must have assumed we were not paying attention to the continuum coming into clear focus – from an acknowledgment of country and welcome to country at one end, to the voice, treaty and co-sovereignty at the other.
Many helped, if unwittingly, to expose that continuum. The ABC started telling us that its programs were coming from Gadigal land, Naarm and so on.
Some members of the legal profession did their bit, too. ACT Supreme Court Chief Justice Lucy McCallum added “this land has never been ceded” to acknowledgments of country during a public address in January 2023. Interestingly, no other speeches since 2023 are listed under her name on the ACT Supreme Court website. Maybe the Chief Justice has gone quiet.
But not before it became obvious to those watching closely that the progression from apparently banal acknowledgments of country to a fight over sovereignty was being driven by elites, not the masses. This political project lacked, to use the language of activists, a social licence. To use normal words, it lacked democratic legitimacy – no one ever asked the people what they thought of it all. It was entirely driven by small pockets of radicals and even smaller groupings of critical rights advocates among legal elites.
But crunch time came when activists pushed for a permanent change to entrench the race-based voice into the Constitution. The campaign for the voice forced the activists to break cover. The Uluru Statement of the Heart set down the path forward, demanding a constitutionally entrenched voice in the Constitution, truth-telling and treaty. Finally, we were going to be asked what we thought. We would learn that there was pent-up demand for our consent.
The ensuing voice campaign wasn’t just Thomas Mayo or Midnight Oil telling Australians to pay the rent; here was a richly funded, widely orchestrated Yes campaign machine telling us the voice was the first step to truth-telling and treaty. And treaty, of course, meant co-sovereignty and reparations.
These demands raised big questions about how we were governed, ownership of land and issues of reparations.
Were we all Australians who shared one unified political entity and whose land rights were determined by the Real Property Acts and other Australian land legislation as interpreted ultimately by the High Court?
Or was the country to enter a new era of co-sovereignty with Indigenous people? In short, was Australia on track to being a Lidia Thorpe country or a Jacinta Nampijinpa Price country?
When it came to welcomes to country, Nampijinpa Price had called for an end to these ceremonies because “we are all Australians and we share this great land”.
The question on the referendum ballot paper offered a refreshingly real and simple choice: yes or no to a constitutionally entrenched Indigenous-only body called the voice?
More than 60 per cent of Australians said no. That’s the danger when you ask a question; you may not like the answer.
Many Yes activists were outraged, putting the loss down to racism and ignorance, rather than the good faith exercise of democratic will. A public statement immediately after the vote by a group of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders, community members and organisations said this: “We do not for one moment accept this country is not ours. It is the legitimacy of the non-Indigenous occupation in this country that requires recognition, not the other way around. Our sovereignty has never been ceded.”
The cat had been belled. These reactions confirmed that welcome to country and acknowledgment of country were baby steps on a continuum of demands for co-sovereignty.
It’s not a stretch to say that other matters on that continuum were implicitly on that referendum ballot paper too – because the activists had put them there even before the campaign.
We know now that many Australians were also saying no to welcomes to country, no to acknowledgments of country and no to co-sovereignty.
Their instincts were first rate. A telling piece in The Sydney Morning Herald in February by Natassia Chrysanthos described the provenance and purpose of welcomes to country.
According to Chrysanthos, the term welcome to country was coined by Rhoda Roberts in the 1980s and stemmed from the custom of Indigenous peoples trekking “vast distances to different ‘tribal’ lands”.
“Roberts likens it to border control,” wrote Chrysanthos.
Chrysanthos let Len Waters, a Kamilaroi elder from Tamworth, pick up the story: “They’d wait for permission because people couldn’t just wander on to different tribal lands if they didn’t belong to that place.
“There weren’t gates or fences, but people knew they weren’t on their own country.”
No honest observer can deny that the essence of welcome to country is about ownership and control of land. It is about whose land you are on.
The original welcome to country comprehensively denied a right to free movement. The more modern one at the very least suggests non-Indigenous people need permission to be here.
The message from those delivering the words is: this land is ours, not yours. Acknowledgments of country come in many forms and the language can differ significantly. However, some of the more aggressive versions are a form of cession of land.
The necessary corollary of “I acknowledge this land is yours” is “I also acknowledge it is not my land”. The necessary corollary of a non-Indigenous person saying “the land has never been ceded” is “it is not our land”.
It’s hard to imagine more divisive assertions of sovereignty.
The beauty of the voice referendum result is that, for the first time, Australians could speak openly and honestly about many matters that had been verboten.
Not everyone has been polite. After a neo-Nazi ratbag booed a welcome to country on Friday last week during the Anzac Day dawn service at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance, the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader both expressed disgust.
Then each leader walked back their disgust as it became clear that for many people Anzac Day was not the time for welcomes to country. Booing is certainly bad manners but it’s not hate speech. If it is, you’d have to arrest half the crowd at the MCG every time Collingwood played there.
The ABC, predictably, fulminated as if it were blasphemy. The clear message was that surely it’s time for us all to return to politely accepting these welcome to country ceremonies as we had done for many years before the voice referendum.
But there is no turning back. The genie won’t be put back in the bottle.
A news.com.au online poll days later asking Australians how they felt about welcomes to country had remarkable results. At the time of writing there were 162,304 responses – 66 per cent of which said the ceremonies should be stopped completely and 23 per cent said there should be fewer. Only 8 per cent said there was just the right amount of these ceremonies. Three per cent said they wanted more of them.
Good and decent people can hold two thoughts in their head at once. They can denounce a moron’s incivility. And they can think that a welcome to country is divisive and political.
Right on cue, Indigenous leader Marcia Langton said “race hate has been incited against us again”. She accused those who opposed welcome to country ceremonies of using “Aboriginal people and our traditions as a battering ram”.
“Decent Australians who reject racism and exclusion will continue to ask traditional owners to conduct welcome ceremonies,” Langton said.
This profound misreading of the referendum result and objections to welcomes to country is telling. If we are accused of being racist, hateful and indecent for taking a different view about a welcome to country, imagine how often this slander would have flown against people with different opinions if the voice had been constitutionally entrenched.
It comes down to two simple propositions. You asked us what we thought and we told you. And saying no to the voice, no to welcome to country and no to co-sovereignty is not racist; it is, in fact, a vote for equality and unity.
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