Are we finally done with Welcome to Country? The unseemly scenes at the dawn service at the Shrine of Remembrance this year seem to have been the straw that broke the Australian public’s patience. For years, we’ve silently grumbled and rolled our eyes as we’ve been ‘welcomed’ and ‘traditionally acknowledged’ at everything from football games to routine plane flights, workplace meetings and school assemblies. It surely wouldn’t have been long before they programmed one of those electronic doohickies they put in birthday cards, so we would literally get a Welcome to Country when we opened our Weeties packets.
Australians are thoroughly fed up with the nonsense. The dawn service farce was just the last straw. Anzac Day is one of the most sacred days on the Australian calendar and it has one purpose only: to remember those who served and those who fell in defence of Australia. It’s not the occasion for a WTC, the entire conceit of which is that those being ‘welcomed’ are outsiders who don’t belong to the country. Lest that message be missed, the Aboriginal activist at the Dawn Service repeatedly hammered home that it was his father’s land, the land of his “elders” and “community members” and “traditional custodians”.
But there was one group of people he didn’t acknowledge, pay respect to or even mention: The fallen. His entire, hectoring, strident speech contained not a word about the fallen soldiers, the men and women who gave their lives in defence of Australia, whom Anzac Day is actually supposed to acknowledge.
No wonder people arced up. Enough is enough. Australians are fed up with being told that this isn’t their country, and never will be, as far as the activists are concerned. Being told that their forebears died for a country that wasn’t theirs was the final insult.
“I found the notion of having country acknowledged when you land in Melbourne or Sydney or Brisbane, absolutely grating” – Tony Abbott
Australians aren’t going to silently grit their teeth any more
Tony Abbott has branded Welcome to Country ceremonies as “divisive” and an “exercise in virtue signalling”, backing Peter Dutton’s criticism that the acknowledgments are “overdone”.
The former prime minister said he had a “fundamental problem” with Welcome to Country ceremonies, questioning why it was routine to “single out the indigenous elders as opposed to the early settlers” or other groups such as veterans […]
“I found the notion of having country acknowledged when you land in Melbourne or Sydney or Brisbane, absolutely grating. Absolutely grating.”
He’s not alone. Nor were the booers on Anzac Day. Across social media, Australians overwhelmingly voiced support for an end to the whole charade. Media organisations like the Sunrise program hastily closed down comments as the tidal wave of resentment against WTC gathered pace. Polls showed that a majority wanted them to stop altogether, while the overwhelming consensus was that they should, if used at all, be reserved for singular occasions such as citizenship ceremonies, which do welcome newcomers to the land.
This should all surprise no one. Australians resoundingly rejected the whole farrago of ‘traditional this’ and ‘indigenous that’ at the Voice referendum. The referendum result was an overwhelming vote for unity. For an Australia not divided along racial lines.
Naturally, the race grifters are apoplectic. They’ve never accepted that they lost the referendum fair and square. They can’t accept that Australians just don’t want their divisive bullshit any more. As coalition leader Peter Dutton said, Anthony Albanese:
“Divided this country with the voice. It was $450m and he tried to divide us on the basis of heritage and race, and I didn’t agree with it and the majority of Australians didn’t agree with it. Australians are respectful towards indigenous Australians. We are all equal Australians. It is why I believe we should stand behind one flag united to help indigenous Australians deal with disparity around health outcomes, around education outcomes, around housing, around safety as you have seen up in Darwin.”
The race troughers just can’t admit it, though.
Indigenous leader Marcia Langton told The Australian: “These rituals do not divide. They bring people together to share in the sacred ancestral power of a place from the deep past. Another generation of Australians are being fed lies.
Ho, ho, that’s rich. ‘Lies’? Does she mean lies like: ‘Vote “No” and you won’t get a welcome to country again.’ That was Marcia Langton in 2022. Well, we voted ‘No’, yet, here she is, trying to browbeat us with WTC, still.
These troughers are so wrapped up in their own bullshit that they can’t even see when they’re blatantly contradicting themselves.
Uluru Dialogue co-chair Pat Anderson [said …] “Let’s be clear. A welcome to country is not about welcoming you to Australia. It’s about welcoming you to our cultures, lands and seas.”
Does she think we can’t spot that? We Australians are not being welcomed to Australia, we’re being welcomed to their lands and seas. Us and them. Their country, not ours.
Anderson has inadvertently given away the lie of another race trougher, Ken Wyatt, who claims:
This is not a challenge to sovereignty of our nation.
It actually is. Sovereignty, I’ll never tire of reminding these clowns, is the supreme and exclusive, indivisible, law-making power over a defined territory. If the land belongs to Aborigines (or, more often, blindingly white ‘box-ticker’ ‘Aboriginal’ activists), then it can’t belong to anyone else. That was the whole conceit of the ‘Voice’: it was explicitly just the first step in an ‘Aboriginal sovereignty’ claim.
The ‘Voice’ proponents literally wanted to turn Australia into an Aboriginal ethnostate. ‘Welcome to Country’ is our many-times-daily reminder that we were destined to be on the wrong side of it.
That’s why we don’t want to hear it.
