Senator Andrew Bartlett
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
 
Thoughts On Australia Day: moving to a great future through accepting our past
There was a good opinion piece in yesterday’s Age newspaper by AFL head Andrew Demetriou about what sort of nation we have become. I’ve met Mr Demetriou fleetingly and seen him speak a couple of times and I find him very impressive (even though the AFL has been too hard on the Brisbane Lions on a few matters). He’s the child of parents who migrated here from Cyprus in 1951 and he writes quite simply but powerfully about how the attitudes of Australians towards outsiders have changed in that time.

He draws the very clear contrast between how we as a nation responded within ourselves to those needing help following the Tsunami, compared to those who arrived on the Tampa needing help. I’d be surprised if Andrew Demetriou’s politics were similar to mine and I’ve yet to hear anyone call him a naïve, bleeding heart leftie – but the way our nation reacted to the Tampa is something that people across the ideological spectrum will look back on with sadness for a long time.

As I wrote here a couple of weeks ago, the nature of migration to Australia is changing drastically. It is impossible to overstate how integral migration has been in shaping where we have got to as a nation. How Australians feel within themselves about that developing engagement with people from around the world will be pivotal to how we prosper – in every sense of the word – over the course of this century.

It’s for the same reason that it’s so important for Australians to reconcile themselves to the central part Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have in our nation’s identity. Of course we need to urgently address the practical, very real and very large disadvantages and suffering which so many indigenous Australians are living with. But the way other Australians feel about, view and comprehend the experiences of indigenous people as part of our nation’s story is not just some idle symbolic thing of no great impact. It is crucial to how our nation views itself and how we develop into the future.

I have written before about the extraordinary blindspot in our nation’s stories and legends. This year we celebrated and re-examined the stories of the Eureka Stockade on its 150th anniversary. Our nation’s fascination with the story of Ned Kelly is as strong as ever 125 years on. Why is it that the names and stories of real home grown resistance fighters that have so many echoes of the stereotypical Aussie hero – underdog, never-say-die, cheeky, noble, tragic –such as Pemulwuy and Yagan - are barely known to us? Why are they not widely celebrated and spoken about as obvious symbols of our nation’s early years?

Tomorrow, Jan 27th is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The German nation is already capable, just 60 years on, of having open national discussion about the unthinkably enormous horrors of that time. They are acknowledging and accepting this incredibly dark part of their nation’s history as an essential part of learning its crucial lessons, without indulging in pointless self-flagellation.

Are we really so insecure and unsure of ourselves as a nation that any mention of injustices suffered by Aboriginal people - even those from 200 years ago and nowhere near the scale of the Holocaust - immediately draws juvenile, censoring criticism of promoting a “black armband” view of history? Until people like Pemulwuy and Yagan are as well known as Ned Kelly and the Eureka Stockade, we cannot even honestly say we are allowing ourselves to know our own history, let alone embrace it as part of who we are as a nation.

For all my positive feelings about the great future our nation can have if we fully embrace the opportunities and richness which migration and engagement with the world can give us, that full potential will never be reached unless indigenous Australians are a properly acknowledged and equal part of it.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Wednesday, January 26, 2005 Permalink
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