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Australia Day needn’t be an ideological battleground

By Graham Young - posted Friday, 27 January 2017


We celebrated two Australia Days this year. The bad news is that they were on the same date as each other. And not only was there be no extra holiday, but half the population wasn’t able to see what the other half celebrated.

As a civilisation we are split almost down the middle about foundational beliefs, and this split manifests not just in Australia, where the federal government was returned with just 50.36% of the vote, but in the USA and Europe with narrow majorities for Trump and Brexit, and the rise of unconventional parties on the right.

Nothing demonstrates this more than the reaction to the latest Meat and Livestock Australia’s Australia Day Lamb ad, and the Victorian government’s Australia Day billboard of two young Islamic girls.

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2 years ago we researched Australians’ attitudes to immigration and discerned two mindsets.

One belonged to “campers”. These were people who thought that Australia was little more than lines on a map, and that anyone should be a citizen, just by being here. They wanted open borders, and were often hostile to established institutions.

The other we called “Team Australia”. Unlike the campers, these people believed a nation is a state of mind, as much as lines on a map, and that to be a citizen you needed to share core values and a belief in key institutions. They wanted to control borders and you might have seen some wearing an Australian flag stick-on tattoo yesterday.

We also call them “cosmopolitans” and “nationalists”. Traditionally they are found on each side of politics, but it is the emergence of politicians who wrest them from their traditional homes and build new coalitions that is disturbing today’s political establishments.

The MLA ad has something for both groups, and in both cases they are offended.

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The ad features two Aboriginal blokes setting-up a barbeque on an open beach, only to be inundated by contingents of newcomers from various eras and nationalities.  Everyone has a good time.

You can read it as a potted history of Australia which is where nationalists take offence.

The ad unfolds as though English, Scots and Irish are in the minority, and puts the Brits on a similar footing to the French, the Dutch, and bizarrely, the Germans.

Without our British antecedents, institutions and habits of thought, it is unlikely that Australia would be one of the best places for multicultural immigrants to settle, and isn’t that one of the things that we celebrate on Australia Day?

Adding insult to injury the advertisement doesn’t even mention Australia Day, except in a passing question from Cathy Freeman “Hey guys, what’s the occasion?”, to which the answer is “Hey, do we need one?”.

Cosmopolitans have different reasons to beef. While they believe in open borders now, the whole ad lends itself to the narrative of Australia being settled rather than invaded and ignores Aboriginal deprivation.

And then there is Po’s throwaway line “Hey, aren’t we all boat people?” Offensive to both sides because it challenges, and even equalises, the right of all of us to be here.

In a world where we all felt secure, this ad wouldn’t be an issue. It’s an advertisement, not a history lesson, and it is meant to provoke.

That wasn’t the purpose of the ad with the two Muslim girls. It was a lone billboard promoting cultural harmony on Australia Day.

As one billboard amongst many I can’t see how that could be offensive, but to nationalists, afraid the nation they know is being systematically undermined from within, one billboard became a forest as a symbol of what Australia Day isn’t.

And some cosmopolitans, while they celebrate difference, only like certain types of difference. Two little girls wearing head-scarves is apparently misogynistic, because their parents may have insisted on it.

Not that all cosmopolitans agreed with this response: a crowd-funding campaign raised over $150,000 to put up even more.

There’s a bit of camper and a bit of Team Australia in all of us.

And perhaps we can agree that Australia is a country with a long history of settling its disputes peacefully, but a reputation for not being very introspective.

Perhaps some of us could put a bit more effort into seeing what is there, rather than what we fear is there. We won’t necessarily ever agree with each other, but we’ll be locked in endless antagonism if we don’t at least make the attempt to understand.

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A version of this article was published by the Courier Mail.



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About the Author

Graham Young is chief editor and the publisher of On Line Opinion. He is executive director of the Australian Institute for Progress, an Australian think tank based in Brisbane, and the publisher of On Line Opinion.

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