There are certain words and phrases which should instantly alert you that whoever said them is not a person to be taken seriously. “97% of scientists”, “hate speech”, the fatuous “be kind”… These are not so much “trigger words” as trip-wires that should instantly light your bullshit filters up in bright red.
To the list, you can add “truth-telling”.
Telling the truth is, of course, a very good thing. But, like “inclusion”, the sort of person who witters about “truth-telling” is almost invariably a fool at best — more likely an unashamed liar.
“When we think about the effect that a national truth-telling process would have on Australia, it’s remarkable,” said Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney in July at the Garma Festival in north-east Arnhem Land. “I see this as, you know, a thousand flowers blooming.”
The Australian
The Australian
A rather telling turn of phrase. It’s a common misquote of Mao’s “let a hundred flowers blossom”, the deceit he used to trick the Chinese intelligentsia into openly speaking their criticism of the Chinese Communist Party. When they did, their words were used as evidence to stitch them up as “counter-revolutionaries”.
Odious phrase aside, Burnie’s own relationship with “truth-telling” is a typical one. For instance, she loves to bang on about “the massacres endured by the Wiradjuri people of NSW”. What she doesn’t say, though, is that the Wiradjuri were no slouches at massacre themselves.
In mid-1824, the Bathurst district was under siege. Local Wiradjuri people had broken off contact with colonists and vowed to kill all invading white men.
Warriors raided outstations, killing people and stock with impunity while large war bands threatened convict stock-workers who either fled or cowered in their huts.
Creative Spirits
Creative Spirits
There are certain other truths that the likes of Burney, and the whole gaggle of paleface, city-based “Indigenous” activists, lawyers, academics, and other assorted troughers don’t like to talk about. They don’t like anyone else talking about them, either.
Just ask Country Liberal Party senator and Warlpiri/Celtic woman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price about the abuse and threats she cops from Indigenous activists when she calls out violence in Aboriginal communities. It is a truth that Indigenous women and girls are 31 more times likely to be hospitalised due to domestic and family violence related assaults compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts.
Last month Northern Territory Supreme Court judge Judith Kelly lashed out at terms such as “systemic racism” and “institutional racism,” telling a group of female lawyers there was a “cultural component” to Indigenous violence.
“There is the culture in some communities that tolerates violence against women and others that blames the victim and prioritises the interest of the male perpetrators over the female victims,” she said.
There is also the blasphemous truth that Australia expends enormous resources on “closing the gap”. The government spend on Aboriginal Australians is double that of the rest of us. How’s it working out?
It is true to say the homicide rate in some NT towns is nearly twice that of the United States. It is also a truth that Indigenous youth suffers disproportionately from parental neglect. And is true that only 41 per cent of Indigenous children attend school 90 per cent or more of the time compared to the national rate of 70 per cent […]
It is also true to say that many of the so-called progressive commentariat and Indigenous activists loudly decry governments for the state of these communities but refuse to acknowledge the root causes other than blaming racism and colonialism.
Then there is the unspeakable truth of the “Aboriginal” bandwagon.
The 2021 census recorded that 812,728 people identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, an increase of 25 per cent from 2016. And it is a truth that many of these arrivistes are motivated by a rent-seeking industry that mandates everything from holding so-called welcome to country ceremonies to employing ‘cultural safety’ officers.
The Australian
The Australian
But the final truth is that speaking any of these truths will see you hauled before a “human rights” star chamber with dizzying speed. When a group of Queensland university students dared tell the truth that they were kicked out of a computer room because of the colour of their skin — white — they were immediately subjected to years of devastating (and often secret) lawfare. Let a hundred flowers blossom, indeed.
Telling the truth is the last thing the “truth-telling” brigade really want.
