Dear Malcolm,
You and your band of merry members have recently taken to pushing the ‘Australian values’ line. And using the word ‘patriot’ a lot.
Jeez, it’s all a bit American, isn’t it, Mal? Should we put our hands on our hearts when we sing the national anthem? (Not that I will sing lies, Mal – we are not young and free. We are old and, according to multinational miners, cheap.)
Mal, I am not one of your patriots. I do not accept your Australian values. I am a citizen of this ancient land.
And it is ancient, Mal.
You and your ilk have poured millions of dollars into perpetrating the myth that Australia was born in war a hundred years ago. You have deliberately ignored the majority of Australia’s history. One day, you’ll have to acknowledge the historical reality. You’ve got to man up sometime, Mal.
Australia was born tens of thousands of years ago, and was a place of peace – until the illegal European occupation beginning in 1788. Australians resisted this violent incursion. They defended their land against invasion, making them true patriots.
Where are the monuments, Mal?
Before the brutal European settlement, Australians of 400 different nationalities lived in harmony, united by an understanding so obvious that it beggars belief that you don’t get it: You’ve got to look after the land, Mal. It’s basic stuff. Commonsense 101.
You and your ilk siphon billions of taxpayers’ money into continued warmongering and glorification of war to distract from your homeland negligence. So many Australian deaths in foreign conflicts that had nothing to do with defending Australia.
Oh dear, Mal.
And don’t prattle on about Australian values which include the environmental trashing of this sacred land. Don’t lie through those perfect teeth (not available under Medicare) about the ‘trickle down’ benefits of helping the rich help themselves to our common wealth.
There is no trickle down effect, Mal. As you and your accountant know, the buck stops with you and your mates.
Maybe you should look to those real patriots, whose history you choose to ignore and whose culture you try to obliterate, for some insight into good governance – sustainable governance which lasts for more than a hundred years. Maybe, 25 years after Mabo, you should start treating the landlords with a little respect, Mal.
Maybe you should listen to these Australians, rather than forcing on them your own chauvinist ideas of what’s good for them.
Maybe you should ask these Australians about how to care for country, rather than abnegating that responsibility and gifting it to corporations, allowing money to rule where people should.
Let’s face it, Mal, you have no idea how to govern for a sustainable future. The sounds you make are out of tune. With you there is no song of progress, liberty and tolerance, only a dirge of racist, undemocratic and jingoist bleats.
The patriots you are calling for will need an enemy. And you can provide that, can’t you, Mal?
Muslim extremists will kill us. (Well, Mal, you did bomb Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria…) Immigrants will take our jobs. (Actually, technology took mine.)
Greenies will, um, take our jobs.
Create the fear, and your panicked patriots will wave a flag while you snatch away their rights as citizens. To protect them, right?
That way you can silence protest; you can shape native title to suit corporate deals; you can continue to kill in foreign lands; you can drill, dig, and clear this great southern land to a chorus of ‘oi, oi, oi’ until there’s nothing left but a dribble of toxic rivers and faint echoes of what could have been.
Actually, Mal, it’s you and your mates who are a threat to Australia.
You can count me out. Mandatory patriotism……..never.
You can count me out. Mandatory patriotism…….never.
I hope Malcolm reads this. I hope he gets this.
I know I do.
We do.
Why can’t he and his ilk? (Love that tiny word!)
What you say is true. I was born in this country, 75 years ago, and have watched the lives of our people being ground away by patriots (Governments),black & white. Until now we live on the poverty line. Our land has been degraded to such a degree, that it will not be of any use to anyone. Mineing included.
What happened to the days when people had room on there block to grow some fruit trees, have some chooks & a little garden that Dad grew vegies. This must have been before Developers got there greedy hands on the land. Patriot No. Love, Peace, Right Conduct & Non Violence forever.
Living in the world has always been a balancing act between the old and new. Your apparent pragmatic approach does not consider the real Australian- 25 million trying to do the best they can. Your argument seems more like a gripe designed to have no answer so you can continue whinging with no recipe to fix anything.
These AUSTRALIANS???? I hope you forgive yourself by labelling thousands of years occupation as AUSTRALIANS. Need I say more, you have named the Aboriginal Community as Australians just like
everyone else, including MALCOLM. Who apparently caused all this according to your perseptions.
It’s not humans who OWN the land we live in/on.
It’s the LAND who lets us live here.
Try real hard Mal not to trash it.
Don’t think Mother Earth really will put up with the continual barrage and destruction of bushland, rivers, waterways, and rainforest {what’s left of it}.
Do you think that the complete disregard for the birds and animals that live in our land or the continued obliteration of all who fall prey to the bulldozers is actually being patriotic and true to our country Australia?
Wake up oh wise ones!!!!!!!! Especially you Mal. Your only education was in making a heap of coins and notes.
Governments do NOT care for the Land, the People or the Future.
They care for self aggrandizement and all of its accoutrements.
We are on the downhill run. How many houses, cars, tv’s mobile phones,computers, ipads, overseas holidays, do you have? That is the standard western model and that is the conversation that we hear around the dinner tables, coffee shops and restaurants.
People play at being concerned but what are any of us prepared to give up to have the Planet returned to itself, to heal itself? Why can we not see that it is and has been the increase in Population, the rabid growth and consumption of all of it’s, (Earth’s) resources and the unthinking, indiscriminate disposal of our wastes that is the problem. We are defecating all over the Earth and destroying all of it’s habitats and Environments. We can blame the ‘Governments’, but are we not them?
Is it not us in the end and how we chose to live that is the real problem We who in the west actually have a choice. We allow ourselves to be manipulated into Wars, Consumerism and this ghastly word, Patriotism.
How about just trying to be Humane, yes Human beings who care and are aware.
Dear Anne,
I smoke and I pick up other peoples’ butts. Guess who tries to at least put it in the rubbish bin.
Not so the people who throw it out the window of the car at a roundabout.
I am trying to.
The paper and plastic and takeaway containers usually end up on the road along with the lounge suits and garbo bags full of what which are settled in spots outside the jurisdiction of evidence.
What to do about a headlong drive towards eclipse of the planet?
I guess the “Wise ones will tell us somehow”
Our vilified and burgeoning precariat class along with the working poor are denied education, ensuring they sop up ideologies of hate. The rest of us, we toil for soon to be landfill. Hate begets hate, also suspends intellect. We’re all Gonski
Patriotism, the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Dear S.
Malcolm knows that everything you wrote here is true . He also knows the punters in the marginals won’t vote Liberal if he were to say so. The Prime Minister is a fraud. He knows that too.