Cloaking yourself in a flag doesn't make you Australian

Warning there is offensive language in this one. If you want to complain about Welcome to Country, or you reckon singing the National Anthem makes you a better Australian than someone who doesn’t, or you don’t believe we should consider whether we ought to be a Republic and change the flag, maybe don’t bother reading any further. The views are my own.

From the Monty Python Bruces Sketch

Second Bruce: I'd like to welcome the pommy bastard to God's own Earth, and remind him that we don't like stuck-up sticky-beaks here.

Everybruce: Hear, hear! Well spoken, Bruce!

Fourth Bruce: Bruce here teaches classical philosophy, Bruce there teaches Haegelian philosophy, and Bruce here teaches logical positivism, and is also in charge of the sheep dip.

Third Bruce: What's New-Bruce going to teach?

Fourth Bruce: New-Bruce will be teaching political science, Machiavelli, Bentham, Locke, Hobbes, Sutcliffe, Bradman, Lindwall, Miller, Hassett, and Benet.

Second Bruce: Those are all cricketers!

Fourth Bruce: Aww, spit!

Third Bruce: Hails of derisive laughter, Bruce!

Everybruce: Australia, Australia, Australia, Australia, we love you amen!

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Facebook, Twitter and everywhere now is full of people thumping tubs about what it means to be Australian. Largely it’s repeated memes about the flag and civilisation and how if people don’t like that particular person’s version of Australia then they can GAGF and leave. I don’t know where we arrived at cloaking intolerance, ignorance, xenophobia and disrespect of difference in faux patriotism but here we are. So let me tell you a little bit about the Australia I grew up in.

The 60’s and 70’s were a very different place. If we were to go back it would be like that metaphorical viewing of life on Mars. Near neighbours were called Aunty and Uncle, other adults Mr and Mrs. Bread, milk, soft drinks and newspapers were all home delivered and the postie on his red bike would deliver mail morning and afternoon and blow his whistle when he put the letters in the letter box. We had a briquette heater and hessian bags of the black coal were delivered by Mr Peowrie and the night cart man would remove the pan full of excrement and piss from the outdoor dunny on a weekly basis whilst flies the size of sparrows buzzed around his head.

Men worked, women largely stayed home. We went to Sunday school and prayed on our knees each night –

“As I lay me down to sleep

I pray the Lord my soul to keep

If I should die before I wake

I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

By rote every night this little Martian chanted that mantra and how bizarre and creepy it seems to me now. A kid who couldn’t read taught a verse that was about what he was supposed to hope would happen if he died.

And the freedoms…we had more freedom than we’ve ever had. Freedom to die in our hundreds on the roads when men could be men and drive home pissed from the pub every night. Freedom to spit wherever we wanted to and to throw rubbish out the window of the cars. Freedom to suck in the lead from exhausts that used to sit in thick clouds across the city. Freedom for parents to smoke wherever and whenever they liked including cars full of non-seatbelt wearing kids with windows wound up tight. Freedom to keep women out of pubs, to pay people a pittance, to fight behind the shelter sheds at school, freedom to openly hate difference. Freedom for responsible adults to belt kids at school and at home.

No wokeness then. We could call “New Australians” pommy bastards, Eyeties, Wogs, Slopes, whatever we bloody well liked. First Nations people were invisible and discounted as no-hope A**s and B***gs. And that was just in public.

Behind closed doors, women and children were bashed and abused with no hope of finding ways out. If they did, then inter-generational poverty was an inevitable outcome. Children were told to be seen and not heard. Old soldiers revered but left to suffer their PTSD alone with no help.

So, when I see or hear people wrapping themselves in a flag that is quarter filled with the symbol of another country, and pine for the way things used to be my response is you must be effin joking. Those railing against the consideration for a change of date for Australia Day from one which celebrates the landing of a fleet filled with the flotsam and jetsam of a faraway land in preference to one which all of us could respect seem to me to be missing the point. You’re focussed on the wrong things.

You can pine for life on Mars, overlook the shortcomings and fail to remember that as a nation we actually have come a long way despite those sad, largely hidden aspects of life in the Australia of my childhood.

I think if I look back to more recent times and the failure of the Voice referendum I can’t help but think that campaign was characteristic of the worst of us. The one that presents a nice face to the world but beats the crap out of people behind closed doors. The embracing of the demonisation of difference, the belief that if someone gets a win, that someone else must therefore be losing.

I laughed the other day when Tom Elliott on Radio 3AW on the back of a poll by the IPA which found that 63% of Australians supported Australia Day being January 26th said we should put the issue to bed once and for all by holding a plebiscite and asking people if the date should remain. Of course, the right wing “think tank” IPA, who commissioned the study, explained away the lack of support for the day amongst 18-24 year olds as being “a direct result of relentless indoctrination taking place at schools and universities”. Perhaps they just like to ignore that the old folk who do support it grew up on Mars and were also indoctrinated, just in a way that they hope would make a comeback.

So let me finish with this. I don’t need to call myself a patriot or wrap myself in a flag to be proud of this country, the place of my birth. A place where some of my ancestors have walked for 60.000 years. I do need to remind myself of why I feel that way because Australia means many things to me. It’s a melting pot where difference is something to be celebrated, not condemned. Where despite the short comings, most of us agree it’s better to offer a hand up than a kick down. Where you can worship whatever God you wish and not have to live in fear to mask it lest you suffer abuse. Where everyone is treated equally by the law and where advantages and opportunities are afforded to those who are least able to access them. Where mateship is not dependent upon your gender, your religion, your beliefs or the colour of your skin but simply on the fact that your mates are loved and cherished for who they are.

You might remember that Bob Hawke as Prime Minister in 1987 at his campaign launch at the Opera House famously promised that 'by 1990, no Australian child will be living in poverty'.

We failed miserably at that aim just as we have failed to Close the Gap of disadvantage between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. So, celebrate but please don’t think that the job is done and that we can’t get better.

If January 26th must remain as Australia Day (and I lean towards changing it) then may I suggest a change that may be somewhat palatable and something I have written about before.

Let’s make January 26 a day where in the morning we do look backwards, we remember that this land has a rich history stretching back more than 60,000 years and celebrate the oldest culture on the planet. Let’s recognise that in the pathway to any great and wonderful thing lies pain and sorrow, setback, and adversity, always before triumph and celebration. Use the time before midday as a celebration of indigenous culture and an opportunity to teach truth and explain why the coming of Europeans with their diseases, the policies of segregation, the removal of children from families and all the other ills that came with it, are truths that should not be ignored or brushed under the carpet. At midday all around this wonderful country let mobs come together with Welcomes to Countries, so that in the afternoon we can truly celebrate what we think we are, whilst striving to understand that there is still much to do to make us better. Whatever day we choose it must be for everyone, those whose ancestors stretch back 60,000 years and those who arrived yesterday.

January 26th can then mark both an ending and a beginning, and as we move forward a metamorphosis into something new and wondrous which is neither "Bruce" nor the IPA.