Stick to hygiene, not cultural cleansing

Yarra City Council Mayor Amanda Stone speaks to media about the council’s plan to replace its Australia Day citizenship ceremony with a “culturally-sensitive event acknowledging the loss of culture, language and identity felt by the community on January 26.” Photo: AAP

It appears Melbourne’s Yarra City Council is suffering from a nomenclature crisis, with its inability to distinguish between the titles of councillor and commissar. On Tuesday the council unanimously resolved to stop referring to January 26 as Australia Day, declaring that it will no longer hold citizenship ceremonies on that date.

“I hope our stance encourages people to stop and think about what this date really means in the history of our nation,” said City of Yarra mayor Amanda Stone, who could really do with a refresher course on the remit of local government. “People can still have their barbecues and parties on the January 26 public holiday,” she added.

For now, anyway. As of 2018, the council will commemorate January 26 with a “culturally-sensitive event acknowledging the loss of culture, language and identity felt by the community on January 26.” No longer will the council honour a date “that commemorates the British invasion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands.”

The ostensible catalyst for this was the Aboriginal Community Consultation Report: The January 26 Project. Commissioned by the council, it involved an online survey of 88 indigenous participants as to their views of Australia Day. Not surprisingly, a majority of them had negative views. Naturally, the exercise would not be complete without a pre-emptive progressive smear of would-be critics. “Council should be prepared for a potential media and broader community backlash as part of this and should ensure that Aboriginal peoples who are sharing their stories are protected from racist attacks,” the report warned.

Exactly how many of the survey participants are now living in fear of reprisals the report does not specify, but one is aghast to learn that Melbourne’s inner city suburbs are a hive for white nationalist supremacists. Presumably not a single one of these racist constituents actually votes given the elected council comprises four Victorian Greens, two independents, two from the Australian Labor Party, and one from the Socialist Party.

I am proud to be apart of a Council that has the courage to advocate for change.#changethedate #yarracity #rockcity

— Mi-Lin Chen Yi Mei (@MiLinChenYiMei) August 15, 2017

“I am proud to be apart (sic) of a Council that has the courage to advocate for change,” tweeted ALP councillor Mi-Lin Chen Yi Mei, who moved the motion. According to her council profile, the young lawyer, who was elected in October 2016, has Chinese parents and is “proud of her Asian heritage.” She also subscribes to the most terrifying four word phrase in the English language in that she is “passionate about social justice.”

One would think the priorities of a ratepayer-funded council should be rubbish collection, town planning, and parking, but perhaps these are bourgeois considerations. Welcome to your modern inner-city council, which collects garbage solely for the purpose of dumping it on any institution favoured by mainstream Australia. Admittedly only of the tin-pot variety in representative politics, councillors nonetheless have access to the public purse, something dear to those obsessed with giving their platitudes prominence. But what about representing their constituents? No, no, this is all about Mei Mei Mei.

Councillor Mi-Lin Chen Yi Mei.

Normally it would be proper that a council be concerned with matters relating to hygiene, but this one is obsessed with cultural cleansing. Do not make the mistake of dismissing the Yarra example as an aberration. In June this year, delegates of the Australian Local Government Association approved a motion for councils to consider ways they could lobby the government to change the date of Australia Day. Last year, Fremantle mayor and Greens member Brad Pettitt announced the council would not hold the Australia Day fireworks, and would instead hold a more “inclusive” event on January 28.

In addition to social engineering, the other role of councils has become that of a de facto Opposition when a conservative government is in power. In January 2015 then Moreland City Council mayor and ALP member Meghan Hopper politicised Australia Day when she announced she would not be reading a welcoming statement from then Immigration Minister Scott Morrison at a citizenship ceremony. “I made a commitment to uphold Moreland’s tradition of support for asylum seekers,” she piously declared. “The reading of a message from the minister in fact politicises what should be an apolitical occasion,” added the hypocritical Hopper.

In supporting Yarra City Council’s stance, well-meaning public figures such as Nine’s Today show host Karl Stefanovic genuinely believe they are assisting reconciliation. In their rush to be seen on the side of the angels, however, they fail to recognise that appeasement simply enables progressive hegemony.

"If we are to truly follow through with the apology and move forward together... it must change." -@KarlStefanovic. #9Today pic.twitter.com/TaCA7SXBpL

— The Today Show (@TheTodayShow) August 15, 2017

The ultimate aim of this movement is cultural iconoclasm, and its strategy is to gradually undermine conservative practices and institutions, whether it be by attacking their legitimacy or infiltrating them. Usurping the Anzac Day dawn service at Adelaide’s War Memorial this year, Kaurna woman Katrina Ngaityalya Power, made reference to “stolen Kaurna land” in her ‘Welcome to Country’ ceremony, even altering the 23rd Psalm to include “Yea though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Invasion”. Incredibly, the local Anzac Day committee acquiesced, admitting it knew beforehand of Power’s intentions.

Similarly, the Australian War Memorial is under pressure to commemorate the indigenous people who died in the so-called frontier wars, the skirmishes between colonial settlers and the original inhabitants. In fact, Canberra’s National Museum of Australia features that aspect, but that is irrelevant when the intention is to taint all conservative institutions with the left’s version of original sin.

It is an anti-Western phenomenon. In Durham, North Carolina this week activists toppled a Confederate statue, savagely kicking and desecrating a monument erected nearly 100 years ago. “Groups at the rally included members of the Triangle People’s Assembly, Workers World Party, Industrial Workers of the World, Democratic Socialists of America and the antifa movement,” noted Durham’s Herald-Sun. Should we be surprised?

No doubt the Yarra City soviet would have approved. Yesterday the Turnbull government announced it had removed the council’s ability to conduct citizenship ceremonies. We can expect there will be a resolve of self-congratulations in the council chambers, content in the knowledge they have struck a symbolic blow for the wretched. In reality, the council’s actions are about as dignified and virtuous as the pissed and obnoxious uncle trying to spoil Christmas lunch.

Acknowledging the arrival of the First Fleet is but one component of Australia Day, which commemorates a nation composed of both indigenous people and immigrants. We do not deny the wrongs of the past, but we also acknowledge the British influence gave rise to our being one of the most harmonious, successful, and tolerant countries. If councillor Chen Yi Mei can use council facilities to declare that she is “proud of her Asian heritage”, then why is she so opposed to a public acknowledgment of our British origins?