As I wrote yesterday, Australian PM Scott Morrison is a bigger fool than he looks, if he thinks the grievance-left are going to be satisfied with changing just one word of the national anthem. As I warned, activists always have a laundry list of complaints and pansy-conservatives always delude themselves by thinking that giving in to them this time will finally shut them up.
It never does. It only encourages them.
Right on cue…
Before 1984 Australia had a national anthem, God Save the Queen, and a national song, Advance Australia Fair. When God Save the Queen was proclaimed our “royal anthem”, we were left without a national song.
Now our national anthem has confirmed that we are one and free, it’s a perfect time to consider proclaiming I Am Australian, written in 1987 by Bruce Woodley of the Seekers and Dobe Newton of the Bushwackers, as our national song. As we are arguably the most egalitarian nation on the planet, this song would reinforce the notion that “we are one but we are many”.
Leaving aside the last few months which have brutally shown that Australian egalitarianism has been consigned to the dustbin of history, the song referred to above is a trite, faux-folksy, multiculturalist puff-piece. It’s “they are us” sung for people who still think singing Blowin’ in the Wind on Hullaballoo! is the cutting edge of where the kids are at, man.
But, as I said, leftist grievance-mongering is a moveable feast at the Smorgasbord of Right-On Whinging. A bite at the anthem and they’re ready to pile their plates with a heapin’ helpin’ of “republic” and “change the flag”.
The proclamation of our own flag does not require a referendum, only a plebiscite (as with the same-sex marriage vote).
Almost 29 years after Paul Keating called for a new flag, we continue to look like a British branch office, clinging to the breast of Mother England. It was only a month ago that the Wallabies sang the national anthem in a local Indigenous language while surrounded by illuminated Union Jacks with a couple of gratuitous Federation stars.
“An” indigenous language? Which one? There are hundreds – and almost no-one speaks them. Presumably the height of this fellow’s ambition would be singing I Am Australian in Palawa. A rubbish bit of singalong-a-taradiddle in a language spoken by at best a handful of people? They might as well sing Agadoo in Latin. Although, come to think of it, “Urna quis, excutite in ligno” sounds rather posh, I guess.
As for the endless whining about the Union Jack on the flag – it’s our history. But, donchaknow, that’s just white Anglo-Saxon history and, as some neckbearded leftist dough-boy so bluntly reminded us, we don’t have a culture or a history, we’re “fuckin’ white”.
Except that it’s not just white Anglo-Saxon history. Whinge all they might, “Indigenous” activists can’t ignore the fact that this nation was founded in 1901. The story of Australia the nation begins with Federation – and that’s the story written on our flag. Quite a remarkable story it is, too. For one of the first times in human history a new nation was founded, not out of war, but by the peaceful transfer of power from the Crown (symbolised by the Union Jack) to a federation of states (symbolised by the Federation Star).
The story of the foundation of Australia is written on our flag as plainly as the stars’n’stripes. That is the nation that later generations of migrants have come to because of what it offers.
The grievance-mongers like to harp on about “growing up”, but, frankly, it’s they who need to grow up. Their infantile iconoclasm, their relentless urge to tear down everything from statues to flags, is the hallmark of an adolescent mentality. Real grown-ups are relaxed and at peace with their past.
Nothing, though, quite sums up the vacuity of this anti-flag temper-tantrum than this paragraph:
Perhaps the Aboriginal people might consider giving their flag to Australia as the ultimate symbol of reconciliation. Without doubt, it’s the most beautiful, unequivocally Australian flag to fly over our land.
The Australian
Firstly, the “Aboriginal people” have no right to “give” anyone the flag he speaks of – because the flag in question is a privately-owned, proprietary artwork. Secondly, it’s not “unequivocally Australian”: it’s Aboriginal. Ponder, if you will, the hypocrisy of those who whine about “exclusion” wanting to impose a symbol that excludes 97% of Australians, solely on the basis of race.
And there’s still three more weeks to go until Australia Day. The annual festival of leftist whining has kicked off. But then, they’ve had even less to do over the past year than usual.
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Does Scott Morrison really think changing a word will satisfy this rabble?
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