Australia Day racism claims remind us that name-calling has hampered debate

The recurring furore over Aust­ralia Day is one of those times when the word “culture” is often cited, along with that other ­vaguery of newspeak, “values”. We rarely ask ourselves: what cultur­e? What values? In short, what the heck are we talking about?

Today, debate on social issues has been reduced to a pretty low common denominator. In all these debates there is a great range between what is vital and what is ephemeral and trivial, purely ideological, and above all fashionable. Unfortunately, in this time of social media, none of this can be separated. It is reduced to appalling name-calling and irrational emotionalism by the bloggers and tweeters and too often by popular media. Serious rational debate often seems to have disappeared, and we seem unable to have debates about things such as immigration or indigenous welfare or sexual issue­s because people are too willing to claim leftist ideology, right-wing conspiracies, racism, sexism or homophobia.

I have been on the receiving end of some of this myself over the past 20 years as a columnist for this newspaper, and accept it because it comes with the territory, but I have often found that unless you stick to your official ideolog­ical pigeonhole, you can get into all sorts of strife, in my case as a defender of Western “values”, althoug­h which values survive in a post-Christian culture is questionable.

Not long ago I wrote a piece defendi­ng the right of Australian Muslim women to wear a hijab, or whatever else they felt obliged to wear, and criticised activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who thinks it is solely a “political symbol” of oppression. Within the avalanche of criticism and abuse was an email from a right-wing female activist who wrote in the subject line “concern”. Apparently my failure to stick to the accepted line on this subject prompted her concern for my sanity. Was I becoming an inadvert­ent pawn of the Left? No. I just don’t think it matters if Mrs Ali down the street wants to wear a hijab.

Sometimes, failure to capture the zeitgeist and pay homage to the fashionable mantras can be downright amusing. When I pointed out that it would be hard to be the prime minister of a country and the mother of a new baby, the New Zealand media were outraged at this insult to their feminist PM, although perhaps not as outraged as when the New Zealand taxpayers had to foot the bill for Jacinda Ardern and baby to go to the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru on separate aeroplanes. Nor did it occur to some of these media celebs that some of us are more interested in women’s — and men’s — everyday life with kids in tow than the life of their favourite Davos-going role model.

However, most popular media types are pretty shy of wading into deeper waters. So when that icon of Australian suburbia, Kerri-Anne Kennerley, was accused of “almost racism” when she said what everyone else was really thinking about the situation of Aboriginal women and children in outback towns, there was a collect­ive intake of breath.

Somebody who is almost untouchable, a celebrity, was finall­y saying something that is based not on ideology or name-calling, but the sad, ugly truth.

This was followed by indigenous activist Jacinta Price’s out­spokenness on the hard facts of Aboriginal custom and the roots of violence against women and children in that culture. She was quite right to reverse the name-calling. It is indeed serious racism to ignore the plight of people on the grounds of so-called “culture”.

Price has given us a welcome antidote to the phony genuflect­ion of romantic city-dwelling ­sophisticates, who for too long have used the term “culture” as a shield to excuse the terrible things that happen in outback towns and small communities. She was right to shine a harsh light on the stark reality of customary lore in an isolate­d environment that to this day legitimises child sexual abuse in the form of promised marriage and the absolute negation of women’s rights.

Despite these terrible things, the great conundrum for Aborig­inal leaders is how to preserve some things within Aboriginal culture without erasing the whole. This has happened in other indig­enous cultures where similar practices were the custom. Surely one element of the problem that should be addressed by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians is that of isolation. People in these communities are truly living in ­another world and there is no way that some ideas can be erased in such isolation.

One solution to this is educa­tion away from the isolation of those towns. ­Although since abandoned, the system of boarding schools worked in New Zealan­d, where some of the most important Maori leaders were educated­. But we will no doubt hear the usual plaintive cry of “stolen­ children” — yet another ideological mantra trumping logic and practical action.

When ideological cliques of eithe­r the Right or the Left hold sway in politics and popular media, it is usually the ordinary men and women in the middle who suffer. Perhaps one thing that both sides of ideology could agree on is that all Australians want to see an improvement in the lives of those at the bottom — our indigeno­us children. So we should stop the name-calling and the wearying empty resort to culture-talk, and just support those who want to get on with the job.