OPINION: Torn by politics of division
Leaving the ravages left by war in Europe my parents joined the influx of immigrants to Australia, the land of opportunity. It was 1950 and I was 4. I grew up in Milton Brisbane among a league of nations. Polish, Italian, Greek, Chinese, Latvian, Yugoslav, English and Aboriginal. The list was endless as was the variation of faiths.
There were challenges. We were all bloody new Australians, wogs etc. But we brought with us a strong work ethic and a willingness to fit in and introduced a smorgasbord of culinary variations into mainstream food consumption.
We soon learnt to roll with the punches and to accept what was then a character to take the piss out of each other and not to take ourselves too seriously. Those I consider were the best of our days.
Today, in comparison we suffer the malady of identity crisis, cancel culture and division where minority rules under the guise of equality and enforced guilt.
I still remember the day my parents and I along with so many others stood in City Hall on Australia Day and became Australians by choice. We were so proud. Our progeny and theirs would become Australians by birth in a nation that accepted and valued us.
It’s a common story for 26.7 per cent of Australians.
This is what Australia means to me as I am sure it does to many migrants. It is also why Australia Day is so important. Being a good citizen, a good Australian is not about birthright but what we contribute to the nation, its strength, character, and unity.
I find the division around Australia Day deeply disturbing as I do The Voice. In publicly stating that I will likely be branded racist. But I have never been influenced by bigotry. Will changing the date of Australia Day end the division?
Or is this the first step in abandoning it altogether for the stated reason of invading an Indigenous nation.
Regardless of the date, our very existence here is a reminder of what happened over 200 years ago and something we played no part in.
Recognising it is one thing but guilt over it is a step we should not accept.
The Voice to this government is everything but for the silence in what it would be and how it would operate. While rural communities desperately cried out for help and intervention centred on festering indigenous issues that require immediate attention this government has been focused on an ideology and until recently ignored that pleading voice for attention.
Every Australian citizen of good character has the opportunity to stand for office and be elected into parliament. Eleven currently serving parliamentarians of Indigenous heritage chose to do so giving their voice to debate on all issues that affect us all as a homogenous nation.
These members were elected by their constituents who would likely comprise the 270 ethnic groups that make up our county.
Where is the division and racism represented there?
So why The Voice when we already have 11 in a position to make effective change and are duly elected by the people.
The current issues in the North and West were clearly articulated by Indigenous Senator Jacinta Price which was not only ignored but ridiculed for stating fact.
Yet this government wishes to superimpose another voice in our constitution which to my mind is race-based, unnecessary, divisive, and dangerous. I have heard so many people of my generation say in words to the effect that they have seen the best of our nation. That’s a sad indictment of what we have become and where we are heading.
“We are one, we are many” seems to have lost its meaning across all that it was to be Australian.
I like many cling to a national identity that defined us globally as a tolerant nation of people who believed in the democratic principles and mateship that bound us, a nation that always held out a helping hand.
We were inventive, ever optimistic and got on with it. In a harsh land, we learned to make do when things got tough and reaped in the bounty when they improved.
Now we search for and focus on the things that divide us, make us feel slighted. We are breaking up into minority groups in the pursuit of unworkable ideology.
It’s almost as if our enemies within and without are conducting a symphony of divide and conquer.
It’s time we came back together as a proud nation, learning from its mistakes, forgiving the past and each of us striving forward as one of the united many.
This government wishes to superimpose another voice in our constitution which to my mind is race-based, unnecessary, divisive and dangerous