The BFD | No Jokes Allowed: Only Double Standards

As comedians from John Cleese to Jerry Seinfeld have pointed out, Political Correctness has killed comedy. It might have been hoped that we larrikin Aussies would have resisted this stultifying censoriousness better than any others, but, I’m afraid to say, the Australian sense of humour has been suffocated, too.

Today, our most critically-acclaimed “comedian” is a miserable lesbian whose entire routine consists of telling the audience how unhappy she is and how horrible we are. Our once-greatest comedy export, Barry Humphries, has been “cancelled” – his name stripped from the national comedy awards.

As for larrikinism – don’t you even dare.

A senior police constable rewrote then delivered a mock acknowledgement of country at an elite counter-terrorism unit’s Christmas party in Sydney last year.

Naturally, a “woke” snitch made sure to whisper their denunciation into the taxpayer-funded inquisitor’s ears.

The speech was written over the top of an official acknowledgement to country, rewording it to refer to the “TOU (Tactical Operations Unit) nation” with words like “Indigenous” and “custodians” scribbled out and replaced with “tactical” and “protectors”.

“I would like to acknowledge the people of the TOU NATION who are the traditional protectors of this land.

“I would also like to pay my respects to members past and present of THE TOU NATION and extend that respect to other tactical people present.

“I would like to acknowledge that this function is being held on the traditional land that the TOU NATION protect every day.”

Okay, it may not be “Who’s on first” or Dead Parrot sketch, but it’s a good enough piss-take on the po-faced orthodoxies of the elites. Which is what, after all, comedy is supposed to do: take the powerful down a peg or two.

Yvonne Weldon, Chairperson of the Metropolitan Aboriginal Land Council, which represents Aboriginal people in Sydney, said the speech painted a damning picture of one of NSW Police’s most powerful units[…]

“If you can disrespect the ancestors, then what respect do you have for the current people that exist as well?”

Law professor Larissa Behrendt, from the University of Technology Sydney, said it was shocking to see after so many public pronouncements about cultural training in the police force.

“I find it disappointing and actually heartbreaking,” she said.

“The idea of mocking something that is really central to Aboriginal protocols reflects an attitude more generally towards Aboriginal people and their culture, which is demeaning.”

Well, I’d say it’s refreshing to see that despite years of endless brow-beating by high-paid, race-baiting, professional grievance-mongers, at least some spark of larrikinism survives. The larrikin, “a person who acts with apparent disregard for social or political conventions”, is after all, “quintessentially Australian”, according to scholars.

As for being “really central to Aboriginal protocols”, the word that comes to mind is: bullshit. “Welcome to Country” is a fabrication. A cultural pantomime invented out of whole cloth in the 1970s. I personally realised how vacuous the whole routine really is, some two decades ago, at a wedding party consisting entirely of whiter-than-white hipsters which nonetheless began with a solemn “acknowledgment of country”.

It’s also somewhat amusing to see who’s whining about disrespecting ancestors and culture. These are the very same people who cheer the vandalism of statues of other peoples’ ancestors, denigrate the culture of the “whitefella” and demand to “burn it all to the ground”.

Respect is a two-way street. If you want your culture to be respected, best not to go around vandalising and tearing down everyone else’s.