For a mob who like to call themselves “warriors”, city-based Aboriginal activists sure seem like a fragile lot. So delicate are these little flowers that they feel “unsafe” at the very mention of a woman’s name. It’s a wonder they can bear to look at their own pasty, European complexions in the mirror every morning.
And they’re “offended” by everything.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews on Sunday announced a re-elected Labor government would spend between $850m and $1.05bn to rebuild Maroondah Hospital in Melbourne’s east, naming it after the late monarch, “as a mark of respect to her unwavering commitment to healthcare and our community”.
The decision was decried by Victorian Indigenous leaders including Marcus Stewart – who co-chairs the Indigenous body established by the Andrews government to develop a treaty framework – Greens senator Lidia Thorpe, and Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation CEO Jill Gallagher. Mr Stewart claimed the move would turn the hospital into a “culturally unsafe” place for Aboriginal Victorians.
The Australian
Actually, I would have thought “culturally unsafe” would be white nurses who have to have panic rooms built into their accommodation in remote communities, lest they end up beaten, raped or even murdered, like Gayle Woodford. She was “unsafe”.
Not all Aboriginal Australians are buying this pandering bullshit being served up in their name. As Dr. Anthony Dillon asks:
Maybe someone needs to conduct research, at the taxpayers’ expense of course, to see if Aboriginal people in my home state of Queensland feel safe at the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Hospital at Coopers Plains in Brisbane.
While we are at it, we could check how Aboriginal people in Queensland feel about the Prince Charles Hospital at Chermside. I know my father, a prominent Indigenous Australian and Queensland Senior Australian of the Year, had no issues with cultural safety there when he was a patient.
Aren’t Aboriginal people in Victoria lucky, Dillon asks, to have the Greens and paleface activists acting as “caring gatekeepers who know exactly how they all feel about the name of a hospital?”
As Dillon further points out, all such revolting displays of virtue signalling really do is tell Aboriginal Australians that they are so pathetically fragile that the name of the late monarch is literally threatening to them.
For all that the city-based activists like to blither about “the Old People”, surely the Old People would shake their heads in disgust at such weaklings.
Before colonisation, Aboriginal Australians were able to live under harsh conditions that few of us could endure for more than three or four days. They were tough people […]
Of course, this is just the latest example where it is assumed Aboriginal people are fragile and need protection from names, national holidays, anthems, brand names and cartoons. I have seen academics tripping over themselves to ensure there is cultural safety for Aboriginal students and staff. Interestingly, I don’t see similar concerns for students and staff of other cultures.
The fragility of these activists is also strangely selective.
Do these same Aboriginal Australians feel unsafe when handling currency that has the Queen’s image on it?
The Australian
In the end, though, there are far more serious threats to the health and welfare of too many Aboriginal Australians than the name of a hospital. Violence, disease and abuse, are all rampant in too many Aboriginal communities.
But that’s a far harder problem to solve than simply whinging about the name of a hospital — and if there’s one thing an activist is really threatened by, it’s hard work.
