Lest we get too self-righteous
WHEN was the last time we enjoyed Anzac Day, Christmas, Australia Day or even Easter without extreme elements from the Right or Left going off like frogs in socks about politics, religion and identity?
Last week alone, if it wasn’t returned soldiers marching under an indigenous flag or the “Welcome to Country” given at various shrines, there was the most remarkable outrage and abhorrence directed towards Yassmin Abdel-Magied.
To recap: on Anzac Day, this Sudanese-Australian, Muslim woman who was Queensland Young Australian of the Year in 2015 uploaded a post on Facebook about the plight of refugees, reminding us as we think of our soldiers to also spare a thought for them (“lest we forget”). When she was alerted it was potentially offensive, she retracted it and apologised.
But don’t let that stop the haters, or calls for her to be sacked from the ABC and its funding taken away.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton and Senator Eric Abetz asked that Abdel-Magied be removed from the Council of Arab-Australian Relations. George Christensen suggested selfdeportation. I say, enough already. It’s getting to the point if you dare to suggest there’s a dark/alternate side to the Anzac legend or Australia Day etc, or you proffer an opinion that sits uncomfortably with or affronts someone, you’re not a trueblue, dinky-di Australian, even if you’ve bled or died for the country.
Only last month, Attorney-General George Brandis was calling for changes to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (where the words “offend, insult and humiliate” feature), stating it stifled freedom of speech.
He argued, this was “one of the key things the Anzacs fought for”.
Quick to defend cartoonist Bill Leak’s right to offend, the same people have been swift to find offence, disrespect and a whole range of malicious intentions in a young woman-of-colour’s choice of words.
Lawyer and commentator Duncan Fine pointed out that: “Those who stand politically on the far right often complain that those on the left are too precious and too quick to outrage. But strangely enough, no one does outrage quite like them.”
As for the “outrage” over the foregrounding of any politics, well, war is political ergo so is Anzac Day, when we commemorate our service men and women and the effect the wars they’ve fought and are fighting in has on personal and national identity, families, communities and countries.
Next: Claims from mostly conservative commentators that marching under the indigenous flag on Anzac Day was divisive are themselves doing the dividing. Anzac Day often draws attention to minority groups and tries to honour the fallen and serving in myriad ways. This year, indigenous soldiers were given their long-overdue recognition.
Identifying as an indigenous man or woman does not preclude other identities.
One can be simultaneously indigenous, soldier, veteran, and Australian. As 21-year veteran, John Enchong, a Torres Strait Islander noted, Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders fought and died for their country long before they were even classified as human beings in the 1967 referendum.
It was about time our indigenous veterans had the chance to lead the marches and under their own flag. Again, this doesn’t disqualify the Australian one and all it signifies. I always find it a rather peculiar mindset that insists, especially on days like Anzac, Australia Day, or even at sporting events, that it does.
Why can’t flying it be read as inclusive? Since when did our sense of identity become so fragile?
Surely, we’re more resilient, more accepting than that?
Come Australia, Anzac or any religio-secular day, quite a few of us seem to become a bunch of ultra-white, chest-thumping nationalists, locked in a nostalgic, sentimental and exclusive view of ourselves and history, never mind absurdly incensed.
Our soldiers, of all colours, races and creeds, past and present, sacrificed – and still sacrifice – their freedoms so we might have ours to speak and be held to account; to include not exclude. To have mates, not hates. Lest we forget.