by DAVID FLINT – AUSTRALIA Day celebrates the settlement of Australia and the benefits to all, however imperfect, that could only have come from the most benign and advanced colonial power at the time, and with the Americans, in recorded history.
This is not, of course, to say that imperial Britain did not have faults, some grievous.
- It is the myth that pre-settlement Australia was a utopian paradise protected by advanced customary law.
- The Left’s campaign for the break-up of Australia was hardly advanced by Lidia Thorpe’s embarrassing Australia Day harangue.
But any study of the impact of the British settlement must consider three things. First, the alternatives were all less attractive.
Usually, consideration of alternative powers is limited to the Europeans, forgetting the Asian and especially the imperial Japanese whose brutal rule too many Australians suffered and died under in the Second World War. Then there were the Polynesians and Melanesians.
RESISTANCE
The second matter is that power abhors a vacuum and nothing equating or approaching State or government power existed in the land, certainly not one to sustain a resistance or a frontier war.
A continuation of the hunter-gatherer society was therefore unlikely, indeed impossible.
Finally, there is the myth that what is described as the world’s oldest living culture was some utopian paradise protected by advanced customary law.
One of the leading historians in this area, Keith Windschuttle, has after long study concluded persuasively that unwritten, ununified and ununifiable customary law, in which the traditional recourse is violence, permitted to an unacceptable degree against women, is hardly the solution today.
As Inga Clendinnen, one of Australia’s most distinguished historians wrote, what the settlers saw as “remarkable” were the blows Aboriginal men “publicly, casually, dealt their women for trivial offences”, and their ready resort to weapons.
Provoked by a woman he “spears her… knocks her down on the spot…(striking) her on the head, using indiscriminately with a hatchet, a club or any other weapon”.
Far from being confined to Sydney Cove, she writes that “the same scenes” were witnessed by explorers and settlers “across the continent”. Rather than being a solution, Windschuttle argues that traditional culture is the problem.
Despite the issues of invasion and frontier war (topics I shall examine in another column), why do so many in the media report Australia Day as if its future were to be decided by the minority who want to overthrow traditional Australia?
When a similar campaign against the flag was mounted with an avalanche of assorted commentators and opinion polls, then Prime Minister John Howard wisely responded by legislating that any change would need to be first approved in a plebiscite where the existing flag was one of the choices.
With clenched teeth, Labor did not dare oppose letting the people decide. They knew when they were defeated by a master.
When did you hear recently of some beach towel becoming our flag? Thank John Howard (and the Australian people) for that.
Now Queensland MP Henry Pike has given notice that he will introduce a similar bill relating to Australia Day.
UNSUBTLE
If the government and its allies kill his initiative, this will only confirm that they know the people want to keep Australia Day on January 26, despite their unsubtle moves to undermine it over the citizenship ceremony “discretion”.
Just as John Howard killed off Keating’s new flag campaign, so can the new Australia Day campaign be neutralised.
In the meantime, if a media outlet decides to run an opinion poll on Australia Day to advance some tired part of its agenda, as The Sydney Morning Herald did this year with a poll about a politician’s republic, at least do it with some professional rigour in its preparation.
It was extremely unwise to base it on a dog-whistle 57-word question containing two false claims, each repeated twice and each propaganda already used by the semi-official ARM republicans.
These were that Australia isn’t even now independent and that we don’t have an Australian as Head of State, despite all governments – both Labor and Coalition – saying to all the world that we do.
On the latter, Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy has been advised by a team of leading lawyers and experts in vice-regal practice who are unanimous in concluding that the governor-general is indeed Head of State.
The embarrassing headline on the story about this poll, “Royal drama pushes Australian voters towards republic: poll” was not saved by a side question on Harry and Meghan.
Demonstrating that, as has been argued here, Australians are a wise constitutional people, the result was that a minuscule margin-of-error three per cent joined the 19 per cent who in the September Resolve Monitor poll strongly support a politicians’, rather than our crowned, republic.
HOPELESS
One thing is clear. Republican politicians will be extremely angry with the Herald for revealing just how hopeless a second referendum would be.
In the meantime, the cause of those campaigning for the break-up of Australia was hardly advanced by Senator Lidia Thorpe’s embarrassing Australia Day harangue in Melbourne.
And why did her supporters cheer each of her ludicrous claims as if they actually approved of them? “This is a war”. “They are still killing us”. “They are stealing our babies”. Each followed by cheers.
These claims are as baseless as are the myths invented to convince other Australians that our constitution is a racist document in need of radical reform.
OUTRAGE
The latest and the most laughable myth is by the federal minister, Linda Burney, that had the Voice existed, the outrage in Alice Springs and in many other places, would not be occurring.
Ms Burney surely realises the outrages are occurring because both she and her Prime Minister were deaf to the pleas of leaders unlikely to ever join the inactive and compliant indigenous establishment populating this Voice.
The origins of the key myth arguing Australia was invaded go back to the mismanagement of the 1967 referendum and its consequences.
I propose to return to this, and whether the elusive “frontier wars” actually took place, in a later column.PC
Sorry to hear of your discontent with Australia, Mr Jones. Which country would you therefore prefer to live in?
I want Australia top stop acting like a sad little bunch of pathetic colonial grovellers, still clinging to the trinkets and baubles of another country’s empire. Because I back Australia.
No other country on earth still grovells to its old imperlial overlords as shamlessley as Australia does. It is pitiful.
I back Australia. I want to live in an Australia which has pride and dignity and national self respect.
Not an Australia which brands itself as the distant colonial outpost of another country’s empire.
David as usual you must read my mind and again I thank you. I have a suggestion for all the aboriginal activists and all their professors who resent the British settlement. Give away all your modern living to someone, leave the settled cities and towns take no modern appliance with you and head into the bush or go to a bush camp where the disadvantage aboriginal lives start rubbing two sticks together for fire or warmth and start hunter gathering and we will leave you be. This is as much sense that you make. This 2023 get my drift. Or go study history.
Mr Jones! Yes, there are ex-French colonies that would like the stability of the colonial era. For all its benefits and burdens, many colonial administrations provided stability and opportunity to advance for much of the population who were worn out by tribal and internecine fights. Witness the situation in Comoro in 1997 where the failures of independence incited a desire in much of the population for France to re-colonise and bring legal and social order to the country. From some personal conversations with some African acquaintances, many of the educated/professional sections of former colonial societies have told me that re-instituting some sort of Anglo or French governmental system and getting rid of tribal antagonisms and corruptions is preferable to the failed Marxist independence movements.
Stop lying.
No former French colony advertises France on its flag.
No former French colony celebrates the arrival of the French navy as their national day.
No former French colony still allow the French head of state to reign over it.
There is no equivalent to Australia’s pitiful lack of dignity and desperate colonial grovelling.
The world’s oldest continuous culture came to an end in October, 1979. You hear very little about the end of truly tribal Aboriginal culture, because it doesn’t fit the current left-indigineous narrative. The truth is (Google it) that Warri and his wife Yatungka came out of the desert of Western Australia in 1975 after prolonged drought and hardship and advancing age forced them to confront white society. For several decades, they were alone in tough desert conditions after both being ostracised from their respective tribes by their own people. It should be the stuff of movies as to how they lived a truly nomadic isolated existence and how they (and maybe a handful of others in 1979-80) had no interaction with any white Australian society. This is the real story of Aboriginal culture and living off the land.
The choice at the time was colonisation, yes colonisation, by the French, Spanish, Portugese, Dutch, if not by the English.
1. Colonisation by the French. They would have brought in the Catholic missions, and divided the land up logically between the French settlers. No reservations. The aboriginals would have been well treated by the missionaries, but their culture would have been stamped out. The children would have all been taught French, and 50 years on the aboriginals would all be speak French only and would be reasonably well educated, and can read and write. All outback aboriginals would be tracked down and forced into the missions “for their own good”. There would be no States. The administration would be various smaller divisions each administered by a centrally appointed administrator. Not bad. In many ways better than the English/American model.
2. Spanish. Again the aboriginals would be forced into missions. But no education, except for a smattering of religion. They would be forced to work hard. The land would divided among a few Spanish in large estancias. The aboriginals would be wiped out, or allowed to exist in dire poverty. Result. They would have been far worse off than under the French or English administration. A mish mash of States and central administration. Corrupt and useless.
3. Portugese. As above, the same, with Portugese language instead of Spanish.
4. Dutch. Totally ruthless and money hungry. No missions or reserves. The aboriginals would have been forced into slavery, and would have been kept alive on the whim of the “baas”, the owner of the farm. You work or you won’t be fed. A master-slave relationship would survive well into the 20th century. The Dutch would also massively raid the Pacific islands and bring in South Sea islanders to work. The administration would be Colonial, right up to mid century. The society would be a few rich junkers and a lot of poor coloured people of different descriptions. Compared to the English, very bad for the aboriginals (if they survived at all).
So all in all, an English “invasion” was the best outcome for the aboriginals, though some would argue the French would have been better, though they would have destroyed all aboriginal culture.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are FAR better off as a result of the so-called British “invasion”. There were faults on both sides and a lot of pain and suffering caused by settlers AND the indigenous people but overall the result has been positive for all of us. It’s only now being spoiled by activists whose sole purpose is to create disharmony and division. The Voice is just the first step in that process and is entirely racist in both concept and design.
When the Fist Fleet sailed into Botany Bay near the Northern shore, the suburb know known as La Perouse, were two French warships at anchor and a camp set up on shore, complete with flagpole and Flag of France.
Apparently the local tribal group had not chased them away.
However, after friendly discussions between the British and the French the French warships sailed away.
Are there any ex French colonies which still grovel to France as shamelessly and as desperately as Australia still grovels to the UK?
No?
Thought not.
You’ve obviously never been to Spain, and seen the extent to which the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America still defer in a cultural sense to Spain.
Hundreds of countries were colonised by a foreign power.
Most are now republics.
More have a flag of their own.
None celebrate the arrival of their colonisers as their national day. Except Australia.
Our shameless colonial grovelling to a foreign power is not normal.
So is denial.
We allow another country’s king to reign over us.
We advertsie another country on our flag.
We celebrate the arrival of another country’s navy as our national day.
Who is denying that?
The name “Noel” is derived from an old French word, and the surname “Jones” is of Welsh and English origin.
How ironic is that?