Australia Day should be a day designated for reflection. It should also be a day where we acknowledge the injustices that plague Australia’s past, whilst also working together to conceptualize our future as an open-minded, prosperous, and progressive society. In recent years, the Australian flag has come to embody negative connotations, with the now ubiquitous symbol of the Southern Cross being ignorantly hijacked and widely adopted as a symbol of the kind of nasty blind nationalism and myopic bigotry that is in no way conducive to social cohesion. Whilst these moronic patriots – steeped in a romanticized and nostalgic past that no longer exists – do not, perhaps, represent the bulk of the Anglo-Saxon population, the percolation of this simplistic puritanical patriotism as an undercurrent throughout Australian society is unhealthy. It is not at all helpful if we are to foster the kind of harmonious and inclusive society that is required of us as a democracy wherein marginalized people can start anew.
Politics, and most importantly, political leaders themselves, need to wholeheartedly embrace the ideology of internationalism instead of pandering to the antiquated and quixotic ideas surrounding Australian history. Indeed, in my belief, politicians, and particularly and unsurprisingly those on the conservative-right, are not doing enough to ensure that the spread of an aggressive ultra-nationalist racist culture is dealt with intelligently. John Howard ‘that maverick of the 1950’s’ as Paul Keating once referred to him, was particularly damaging to the promulgation of relative inter-racial unity within Australia. A conservative militant, yet apt political entity, John Howard did much to promote the kind of nostalgic, ideologically backward, and socially derisory concepts of what Australia is and what it represents, that we need to escape from if we are to progress as a nation. Similarly, Howard’s contemporary, Tony Abbott, in spinning his own theistically inspired version of reactionary conservatism, continues to murder the Australian image with cheap and populist slogans about the threat of boat people. This is the kind of small-minded reactionary opportunism that Australia does not need. Policy-makers need to act as reforming agents, constantly evolving as an integral part of the social-political-economic nexus, and not appeal to some pointlessly damaging nostalgic idealism of an era which existed in a completely different geopolitical, intellectual, and cultural context.
The popularity of the kind of populist, impulsive, and opportunistic politics of politicians like Tony Abbott is at one end alarming, but at the other understandable. People don’t generally like change, and they politicize this disdain for change by supporting candidates who serve to maintain the status quo. Unfortunately, this small-mindedness is an inherent part of the political process, and whilst it does act as what is perhaps a necessary check against rapid and poorly thought out reform, it itself must be balanced by a strong dose of rationalism. Change is essential, and the longer it is postponed, the more retrogressive the social and economic character of a country becomes. Indeed, it takes a leader with enough vision, intelligence, and charisma to challenge the inertia inherent in people paranoid about the protection of their way of life, and exchange it for the collective good of everybody’s future. In the past, reforms by Gough Whitlam and Bob Hawke, in addition to the liberal internationalist ideology of Paul Keating have been fundamental in shifting the way Australian’s view themselves, and indeed the way in which Australia itself is viewed, for the better. Inevitably, and particularly in the context of such issues as sea-level rise, Australia will have to accept more migrants in the future. Socially, we must be pragmatic and rational about this. We must be as open-minded, inclusive, and intelligent a society as we can be. Economically, instead of being uselessly wistful about a protectionist, culturally and gastronomically homogeneously boring past society, we must embrace the internationalism intrinsic to our contemporary technologically interwoven world. We must also embrace Asia not just economically, but geographically. Politically, we must facilitate, through policy initiative and intelligent language, what it means to be Australian in the context of the world today. Not in the context of some ridiculously irrelevant pre-War past of undivided British patronage. Indeed, underneath the Southern Cross tattoos and ranting fearfulness about immigrants taking Australian jobs, is a hopelessly misguided yearning for what Australia once was, and the selective ignorance of what it has become. Australia is a country whose leaders and people must act rationally. It is a country whose immigrant legacy has not only endowed us with cultural and culinary complexity, but also provided evidence of a country of open-minded, progressive Western democracy, where immigrants can come to start new lives and imagine brighter futures.