Our great Judeo-Christian tradition

My own family lived in South Asia and then North America for about 18 months during the mid-1970’s. I returned to a state school in Mr Howard’s electorate in 1977, the only kid in the class who managed to combine brown skin with a strange name and a New Jersey accent. I was frequently teased and bullied.

Then one day walking home, I noticed the bullies were picking on a boy from a different school. Strangely, this boy had blond hair, blue eyes and white skin. I wondered why he was being bullied by his own kind. The bullies provided a brief explanation: “He goes to Holy Spirit School!”

I went home and informed my mother of this discovery. She responded by befriending all the Catholics in the street. It was her way of showing solidarity with other oppressed peoples!

With such a rich history of sectarianism, it’s little wonder the Catholic religion is excluded from our “Judeo-Christian” heritage. And as Laura Tingle told the ABC Compass program on April Fools Day: “The polling I think on both sides of politics is showing that particularly in NSW and particularly in the outer metropolitan seats in Sydney anti Islamic feeling is now really white hot. And there’s therefore a big dilemma for both sides of politics about the extent to which they exploit that.”

Sectarian feelings are being exploited by both politicians and clergy, including by clergy of faiths excluded from the list. Cardinal Pell can challenge Muslims as much as he likes, but the Howard Government has clearly suggested that Catholicism and the “Judeo-Christian heritage” are mutually exclusive categories.

And try telling Australian non-Christians that their values aren’t the same as Australian values. I’d love to see Peter Costello telling a group of turban-wearing National Party-voting bi-lingual banana farmers from the New South Wales Central Coast town of Woolgoolga that Guru Nanak’s monotheistic message has no relevance to Australian values.

Of course, all this doesn’t mean spiritual values are irrelevant. After all, 160 years before the First Fleet arrived, Portuguese explorer Pedro Fernandes de Queirós came across an island he presumed to be the “Great South Land”, naming it La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo (Land of the Holy Spirit).

Then again, what would a Portuguese Catholic know about Australian values!