Some Australians have confessed that they are embarrassed
that their elected representative repeatedly says he will ‘burn for them’,
meaning that he is passionately committed to representing their concerns. There
is a lot of fire 🔥 in Australia, for sure.
Bush fires, hell fire and the fiery invective of entitled radio jockeys — and
the fire of the day of judgment, of which Election Day is just a taste. Who is
chosen, and who falls short, measured in votes.
97% of the population registered to vote in this election,
and the results are therefore a big index of confidence in the leader who until
now had a divided party and a perceptibly shaky foundation of support.
A little while before the big day, ‘Sco Mo’, as he is known
by his own decree in understated and egalitarian Aussieland, made a Sri Lankan
chicken curry for Mother’s Day at home with his family. Several birds were
killed that day with one stone, not just the chicken that was the primary
ingredient in the delicious dish — which had been made famous throughout the
nation as a winning recipe on the TV show Masterchef, shortly before.
It was a beautifully succinct and effective optic: pink from
his honest effort, apron tied neatly, the radiant kitchen light 💡 pouring benevolently on his head like a benediction
both from God and John Howard, dimples uppermost, the man beams as reassuringly
as his stainless steel kitchen utensils, shining in the well-equipped kitchen.
In total contrast to the empty fruit bowl of Julia Gillard’s early interview,
we have here a man presiding over abundance, and plenty.
Family man. Man enough to cook for his women on Mother’s
Day. Inclusive enough to cook a justly famous dish of a South Asian country,
something far more exotic than the sun-dried tomato that was the previous yardstick
of exotica in Terra Australis. And the caption of the photograph put out by the
PR team for the PM appeals to decency, hard work and quiet 🤫ly getting on with things — God knows, qualities we
all want to see embodied, in the current era, characterized as it is by the
vulgarity of Trump and the virulent threat of global terrorism.
I love this photo. But I have to wonder, as Mr. Morrison heats up the burner under his chicken curry — one of my own favourite dishes too, by the by — does he burn for me, too?
Does the fire of his passion for the greatest country on Earth include those seeking asylum, detained off-shore in reportedly inhumane conditions? With the security guards outsourced to private security firms so the government cannot legally be held directly responsible for their actions? Some of those detainees are Sri Lankan. Is the chicken curry over which the PM is presiding big enough for them, also, to partake of it?
Australia is indeed a great country. It opened its doors to non-white immigrants after the brazenly racist White Australia Policy was dismantled in 1972, under the Labour government of Gough Whitlam. Refugees from Vietnam came in boats — and became dentists, and doctors, and shop owners, and writers. Under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, immigration was extended to include South Asians, and skilled migrants. In 1992, the rights of indigenous Australians to be regarded as people who could — and did — own title to land was recognized by the Mabo case.
Under the Liberal government of John Howard, those rights recognized and bestowed in law by the High Court of Australia were systematically eroded in actual practice. Pauline Hanson emerged to state that Aborigines had provably smaller brains than white people, that they and other ‘welfare parasites’ were being given special treatment, and ordinary Australians were being ‘ripped off’ in their own country. Howard dismissed the late-breaking and initially hesitant inquiry into the treatment of Aborigines at settlement as unnecessarily negative: ‘a black armband view of history’. But a vast number of Australians, often themselves the second or third generation descendants of recent immigrants, in response to his refusal to apologize for the atrocities of first contact, had enough empathy to understand the experiences of the Stolen Generation, and to listen with a sense of common humanity to the shared experiences of cultural fracture experienced by the First Australians.
Dark-skinned kids got called ‘chocolate drop’ at school, and Marcia Hines with her dark burnished skin was described in Kingswood Country as ‘having vegemite on her legs’. The official religion is not really Christianity but a sort of cheerful, entitled materialism. It’s a wonderful, wonderful life. And it must be protected, of course. Only those who share our values are permitted to enter.
Desperation and ill intention and the inability to contribute and participate will disqualify some. No one wants to share territory with anyone who is a waste of space.
The generously-sized Kim Beazley, years ago said, when asked about his immigration policy, that his Mum used to say that ‘there was always room for one more’. Some acerbic old geezer at the time commented that he must have thought up that slogan in a pie 🥧 shop.
‘Sco Mo’ is the proud inheritor of a lot of traditions. Like other first world countries established on territory which was colonized by Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Celtic and European invaders, the aggressive dominance of weaponry, and the noise and effectiveness of industrialism and commerce, constantly outperform any other voices. Starting in 1788 as a dumping ground for convicts, and some free settlers, Australia now selects the people we allow to come in, most stringently.
A colorful, outspoken, controversial young Muslim woman woke up on Anzac Day and wrote a few provocative words, starting ‘Lest We Forget’ and mentioning the treatment of asylum seekers and other groups at risk in other countries. The tsunami of hate-fuelled protest which she received showed that a nation’s household gods and the sacrifices made by their armed forces must be respected, and kept separate from, and unequated with, other people’s strife. There was only room for one narrative. 18 months later she is doing a book tour, supported by large sections of the Australian media and local booksellers. Many were generous enough to forget — perhaps what she endured in public means she has paid her debt, and is back in credit.
When I miss Australia, which is often, I check out the vitriolic comments on the Telstra Facebook page. There are the Australians I know and love: those outraged sceptics, vigilantly aware of their own rights and honoring their responsibilities. Swearing like troopers. Every second word full of asterisks.
It’s all perfectly decent and reasonable: work hard, pay your respects and take your place in the Aussie way of life. But be prepared, clearly, for cultural appropriation of your signature dishes — and cost-cutting expediency by someone who sees no irony in his actions: grieving for someone close to him who has disability, for example, and cutting funding for those who have disabilities.
A friend of mine, blonde haired and blue-eyed, descendant of European immigrants, moved suburbs because she did not like the Asianisation of the area in which she had grown up. Those pushy, loud Chinese with their alien values! She posted this up on her FB page, prior to last weekend’s Election:
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I met her when we were both 5 years old — she lived across the street from me, and she and her little brother came over to say hullo when we moved in. When I stayed with her a couple of years ago, her daughter told me, matter-of-factly, that her mum saw me as part of the family.
But when my friend dropped me off at the end of my stay at the bus stop near her house, with my overnight bags, she said she would wait until the bus came — because the ‘people in the area might mistake you for a refugee, Devi’.
I grew up in the 1970s and 80s on absolutely equal ground in the sovereign territory of Australia. Watching Countdown. Eating the party pies that made Australia great. I dated Anglo-Celtic boys and young men as an equal. Worked alongside others as an equal. Never once in all that time was my race or my gender belittled or questioned. Hardworking, decent, quiet, simple, honest unthreatened Australians were my friends, employers, co-workers and teachers, guides and mentors, colleagues, peers and students. Some were Polish, some Greek, some Jewish, some Korean, some Chinese, some Indian, some Egyptian, some Italian, some German, some Irish, some French, some Scottish, some Scandinavian. We were in and out of each other’s houses.
Another childhood friend had a mother who was concerned that immigration would ‘erode the Anglo-Celtic values’ that were the foundation of the Australian way of life. Her daughter, staunch Labor supporter that she is, said the political opinions voiced by her mother on any given day were often based on what she had had for breakfast, and to pay them no mind.
But the Australia I knew then, whose values of decency and equality and human dignity I was impacted and formed by, has started to change, as all countries and societies do.
A sun-dried tomato 🍅 which measured the line in the sand, is transitioning perhaps now into a marker lined with chilis 🌶 — and we surely, as a nation, collectively outgrew the marks of monocultural, fear-based, supremacist BS some time ago. Will true decency prevail, amidst the current cross currents of identity politics? If any nation on Earth could showcase that, it could be Australia.
Australians will know the differences between an immigrant and a refugee; and the differences between a dark-skinned person of Middle Eastern appearance and an actual terrorist. We will be sceptical, and actually fact check when we are told — with photographs, as we were shown, in the Tampa Incident — that immigrants are not quite as human as we are, even capable of throwing their own children overboard, to gain our sympathy — and uneasy access to a land of plenty. There’s rule of law, and a process to follow. Shape up — or ship out.
The checks and balances inherent and learned over time in this great brown land might well bring us onto the generous side of the ledger.
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