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Oh cry my beloved country

By Robert Macklin

11 November 2001 - Yesterday Australia failed to rise above its political leadership. One hundred years after Federation, when the first order of business was the White Australia policy, Australians turned back the clock.

In 100 years we have learned nothing.

Instead, a majority among us responded to the call of a Prime Minister whose whispered entreaty was based on race. John Howard’s one great claim was that the "others" were coming. The dark-hued Muslim Afghans. And it was a crisis.

And he would keep them out.

It did not matter that they were fleeing from a war in which our troops were fighting on their side.

It did not matter that he was revealed as a deceiver who would spread the lie that the refugees had thrown their children into the sea. It did not matter that 353 people died in the vast ocean in a terrible failure of his stated policy halfway through the campaign.

It did not matter that only two days ago two women died in agony as their ship burned and sank in the open sea.

It did not matter that he had spread the asylum-seekers on atolls and islands over a vast area of the Pacific to save his political face.

It did not matter that the United Nations and countries around the world looked upon us with contempt. It did not matter that our nearest and most populous neighbour, Indonesia, had turned its face away.

It did not matter. Australia voted for John Howard anyway.

Now we live in a pariah state. And I for one do not wish to live here any more.

I do not want to travel - as so often I have - in the countries of Asia and call myself Australian.

And I will not, ever, accept John Howard as having authority over me and mine. I will not break the settled law of the land, but I will not accept the laws that Howard makes henceforth - as he surely shall - to curb dissent in increasingly troubled times.

But like others who know that there is a better way, I will not allow the Howardites to keep their dominion over this land. It’s too good for them. It is far too precious to let go.

So, starting today I will devote every working moment in every way I know to fight back against the racist and his cohorts who have claimed the reins of power in the land.

And I will start with the creatures of pragmatism - Beazley and his apparatchiks - who refused to give Australians a proper choice, who let the Howardites set the agenda and the rules.

They were wrong and they must go, every last one of them. And if its means joining their bruised and battered party to do it, then so be it. For they cannot be trusted to fight the good fight. It is a prospect I relish. It is the one saving grace in a day of unutterable shame.

From The Canberra Times

related links:

• Australian Election 2001
• ANTaR - Major Political Parties need to lift their game on Reconciliation and Indigenous Affairs
  7 November 2001 - "The Coalition's policy confirms its assimilationist and paternalistic ‘practical reconciliation’ approach to Indigenous Affairs. If returned, the Coalition offers the bleak prospect of a further stifled Reconciliation process, already stalled after 6 years of the divisive Howard Government.”
• We must fight for indigenous-led solutions
  November 2001 - News reporting has been dominated by only a few topics recently. You may not be aware that the Federal Government was recently forced by public pressure (including ANTaR's) to release a damning report which it had suppressed for six months. The Commonwealth Grants Commission's report put beyond doubt what ANTaR and many Indigenous organisations had been trying to draw attention to for many years, that: - Indigenous people's access to mainstream commonwealth funded health, employment and education services is scandalously low.
• Excerpt from leader's debate
  October 2001 - ".. Not while I'm PM. Could I just finish? I think a treaty is divisive. A treaty is something one country makes with another .."
• Coalition plans bigger role for Aborigines
  18 October 2001 - Aboriginal communities would be given a greater say in how government services were delivered to them under a re-elected Coalition government
• Aboriginal candidates are few, but determined
  15 October 2001 - Four out of five Labor Aboriginal candidates may have been elected at the recent NT poll, but at the federal level there is still little indigenous representation. And safe seats for indigenous aspirants are few and far between.
• Black list opens road to parliament
  12 June 2000 - NSW Labor has never sent an Aboriginal politician to either Canberra or Macquarie Street but the weekend endorsement by the ALP State conference to give indigenous candidates a 20 per cent weighting in preselection contests is aimed at redressing that fact, initially at the local government level.

Further information: history issues page - includes news index and external links

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