CP 297 The Flag, the Voice and the Lobbyists
Greeting friends. Back in 2019 I wrote a personal reflection about the Australian Flag, in particular about how I have come to see it as an excluding / exclusive symbol rather than an including / inclusive one, in regard to all my indigenous brothers and sisters in this ‘Great South Land’. Much of what I wrote then is vibrantly relevant to the current VOICE debate. Most indigenous people have long wanted to be genuinely ‘heard’ – not in a condescending way – but truly listened to and heard. I invite you to read my screed, which is reprinted below.
One comment before you do. A frequently and loudly declared fear about the Voice concerns the belief of some that the Voice will bestow a power to the indigenous people to change the Constitution to suit themselves. Not so of course. Only the whole Australian people can do that. What I would point out to you is that a huge number of organisations and groups already have their own personal voices in the Federal Parliament and those voices can be very loud. They are the Consultants and Lobbyists. Much of their power is exercised in secret. There are close to 1000 Lobbyists registered with the Government although most observers think the true figure is triple that. Many of the thousands of ‘Consultants’ have their offices within the politicians’ offices. Again, most are perfectly legitimate but there is also a dark side to the efforts of some. PWC comes to mind. Just as bad is the fact that some politicians have become a Voice for the lobbyists. Think names like Obeid, Macdonald, and a host of others in our news this week.
Let’s be gracious. Let the voice of the invisible and marginalised be heard. Yes!
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“I am a proud Australian. I am proud to be an Australian. I may have been born in the Netherlands but I have never regretted, even for a moment, the decision of my parents to bring me here over 66 years ago. I loved my Australian childhood. I loved the footy and the cricket, the river and all the other outdoor stuff. I connected with Anzac day even as a child at primary school. I loved the story of Simpson and his donkey, I rejoiced in the cleverness of the strategic withdrawal from Anzac Cove.
I always knew there was a cost to the Great War. I still do. On the one hand, Mr Wilson, who lived in the street behind ours, who supplied most of the beer bottles we sold to the bottle-O each year, had lost a leg in that war and self-medicated with alcohol. On the other hand, the enormity of the statistics about Australian soldiers in WW1 still stuns me. Out of a population of just under 5 million, more than 400,000 men and women went to fight in our name. Of these, 60,000 never came home. Around 156,000 were injured. Even as a young person I wondered what was in their hearts and the hearts of those here at home in the years that followed.
The history of the 2nd world war brought more pride in my Australia. The Rats of Tobruk stories lifted me. The bravery of the Aussies on the Kokoda Track inspired me. The suffering at Changi and on the Burma railway not only appalled me but somehow became my own.
However, my Aussie identity was about much more than war. ‘We’ conquered the bush, ‘we’ developed the wool and wheat industries, ‘we’ took on the Poms and the Windies and, more often than not, ‘we’ won. We all loved Steele Rudd, Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson. Ned Kelly became ‘our’ legendary figure. Australian history became my favourite subject. It still is. We live in the lucky country with wealth for toil, and boundless plains to share. It is gift and joy to live in this vast timeless land.
As I grew older that pride blossomed at sporting events, especially when we began to sing the anthem as a crowd. It was not so much an Ocker thing as it was the sense of privilege that I lived in this country. There is a spirit about us Australians which is noticeably and notably different from elsewhere. It’s about the freedom to be who I am, to do what I do, to move when I want to move, and never have to kowtow to any authoritarian types or snobbish elites. It’s about the respect we have for the common man and woman, the integrity, the mutual support, the courage and the compassion. This is not just about sporting prowess. It is a growing reality in all walks of our lives, regardless of how much we grumble about the tall poppy syndrome. We have matured more than we know, and we celebrate Aussies doing well in whatever field we happen to work and play.
Inevitably all of my pride and joy in being an Aussie expressed itself in the flag. It became the important visual symbol which captured this spirit of joyful inspiration. I came to own my own flag, to fly it and to display it, especially on Anzac day and Australia Day, and at international events like the Olympics. And then something changed.
It began ever so slowly, probably from the time we drove around Oz on long-service leave in 1995 and observed something of the continuing aboriginal communities. There was a shift in the way I came to see Australia. There were no doubt many subtle influences of which I was not aware. However a number of ‘awakenings’ caused a conscious rethink to gather a head of steam.
The first happened during 2006 when I took three of my grandchildren to the Museum near Hyde Park in Sydney. We were there for a dinosaur exhibition. We moved on to the museum’s Indigenous exhibition. I was standing next to one of the boys looking at one of those distressing photos taken in the WA Kimberly in the early 1900’s of aboriginal men chained together from neck-collar to neck-collar. I’d seen it before. My grandson hadn’t and his response cut through me: ‘That’s not right!’
The second awakening happened soon afterwards in Hyde Park itself. We lived nearby. One day, walking through the Park I ventured sideways to have a look at the statue erected to honour the memory of Captain James Cook. The inscription reads, ‘Discovered these territories 1770.’ In an instant I finally got a grasp of the evil behind the dismissal and invisibility of the original inhabitants of this great land that has blessed me so.
The third ‘game changer’ was stumbling onto the extraordinary research work of a team from the University of Newcastle about documentable frontier mass killings of indigenous people since 1788. Reading this research on numerous atrocities was shocking, humbling, anger-inspiring and depressing, all at same time. Our wealth and abundance in this luckiest of countries is built on the convenient myth of the empty land. (If my memory serves me well, this despicable myth – Terra Nullius – arose from a decree issued by a Victorian Governor during the 1800’s.)
There were many more moments, but the fourth awakening, which has turned me into a campaigner who doesn’t know how to campaign, was a headline in the Sydney Morning Herald on January 22, 2018. Here it is: FIRST FLEET ’GOOD’ FOR INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS, TONY ABBOTT SAYS. All comment is superfluous.
Four days after reading that unbelievable headline, on Australia Day, I once again flew my Australian Flag at home. The very next day one of my neighbours made a statement by flying the Indigenous Flag in front of his home. Part of his history is indigenous. We then had a companionable conversation during which it irrevocably dawned on me that those who identify with that indigenous flag, who see in it the connection with ‘their’ history, their sense of the sacred, their hopes and dreams, would hardly have reason to think with joy about ‘the colours’ of the Union Jack. Consider what Lieutenant Cook wrote in his journal while the Endeavour was anchored in Botany Bay in late April, 1770.
‘I hoisted the colours and in the Name of His Majesty King George took possession of the whole eastern coast…’
I understand why so many first nations people of this land see January 26 as ‘Invasion Day’, but I believe the disaster which befell them should be dated from Cook’s actions in Botany Bay in April, 1770. And disaster it was. ’We’ subsequently dismissed any sense the indigenous population had of home and homeland, ‘we’ treated their sacred world with contempt, ‘we’ rendered them invisible and therefore dismissable, and thereby ‘we’ took away all cause for hope. And then, as they reeled in their lostness, ‘we’ declared them ‘hopeless’.
Here’s a truth about me about which I am utterly remorseful. I was racist in my beliefs. Surely still am in subtle ways I just don’t recognise. Also, I was trained to be so, by teaching and by communal osmosis. I repent.
Australia has a crucial remembrance day coming up in just over a year – the 250th anniversary of Cook’s arrival. We therefore have a wonderfully open window of opportunity to do some serious soul-searching of what it means to be an Australian in a humble, honest, gracious and inclusive way. There has recently been strong agitation to rethink the words of the national anthem. It is just as important, if not more so, to reconsider the flag from the viewpoint of indigenous Australians. The flag must include them too.
That’s the reason I asked a friend to commission a personal flag for me to fly outside my home on significant days. It’s the regular flag with the British ensign in the top left corner with the Indigenous flag in the bottom left corner. That recognisable indigenous symbol is located on the bottom corner where it highlights that the people it represents are foundational in our Australian community. It speaks strongly to the inadequacy of what we have now, but I believe it points us to the possibilities of the future.”
Fred Veerhuis, Woonona, NSW.
March 2019
