The Australian Way

WE are told that it is not the “Australian Way” for organised gangs, structured on racial lines, to beat the living poo out of each other and, in the process, maim or otherwise discomfort innocent citizens and trash vehicles and shops.

I am not sure what the Prime Minister and others mean by the “Australian Way”. I think they may be referring to hackneyed images of pioneers, soldiers, great sporting identities, Melbourne Cups, rugged farmers, barons of commerce, pioneer aviators, Banjo Patterson, Ginger Meggs, Henry Lawson, picket fences and the Hills Hoist.

Against that, I assume that the “Australian Way” does not mean treating aboriginal Australians like Neanderthal nobodies for the first one hundred and fifty years or so of white settlement of this continent; or getting a belly full of beer and going on a rape rampage; or chucking bottles, fag ends and other rubbish out of car windows; or puking and piddling in public places; or stealing the property of others; or otherwise behaving in some kind of gross and offensive manner. We Aussies don’t get into any of that sort of stuff, do we? And then I also wonder whether the “Australian Way” encompasses Bondy and Laurie Connell and Ray Williams and Rodney Adler and Brad Cooper and paedophile priests, organised crime gangs, drug peddlers and all the other scum bags some of whom were, in their prime, duchessed by politicians of various hues. Not surprisingly, this other grubby side of our brief history and present ethos is never evoked when politicians seek to gild the national lily and explain the inexplicable.

In short, the notion of an “Australian Way” is vacuous nonsense. It is political verbiage at it’s worst. It is a concoction that aims to muddy the waters rather than cleanse and clarify them. We are too young to have any kind of “way” and, thankfully, as each year goes by, there is a further infusion of new and different blood and cultural background. Our foothold on this continent totals a mere two centuries. We have made great progress, we have established a positive position for ourselves in the world but that does not change our newness. Set against the great civilisations of China, the Indian sub-continent, Europe, the Middle East and Central and South America we are the very latest of the Johnny-come-latelys. Even Africa, for all it’s trials and tribulations, can lay very credible claim to many centuries of heritage, long before it was plundered and corrupted by our ancestors.

Ranting wog-baiting

Politicians should stop seeking to imbue us with characteristics which they can’t articulate with conviction and indeed which most of them clearly do not comprehend. And while on the subject of politicians I would like to quote a piece by 2UE broadcaster Mike Carlton in crikey.com on 14 December, 2005:

“Alan Jones’s week of ranting wog-baiting which preceded the Sydney riots was the most disgraceful episode of broadcasting I have encountered in my 40+ years in the media. It was vulgar, vicious and racist, and an unmistakable incitement to violence.

“I’m the person that’s led this charge here. Nobody wanted to know about North Cronulla, now it’s gathered to this,” he screeched, as listener after listener phoned to declare war on Muslims in general and Lebanese in particular. “ A community show of force!” he shouted. Hitler’s Brownshirts would have loved it.

In a sea of radio filth, Jones’s most disgusting act was to broadcast, and to repeat, the SMS phone message calling for violence: “Come to Cronulla this weekend to take revenge. This Sunday every Aussie in the shire get down to North Cronulla to support the leb and wog bashing day.”

That a broadcaster could trumpet such madness on air is beyond irresponsible. His furious encouragement of every racist ratbag who rang in was outrageous. To recall Stanley Baldwin’s famous stab at the press barons, it was “power without responsibility; the prerogative of the harlot through the ages.””

This is the same Alan Jones who — along with a couple of his fellow shock-jocks — is duchessed by the very highest politicians in the land. Prime Ministers, Premiers and ministers sit at his feet whenever he deigns to summon them. But will any of them chide him for the intolerably intemperate and offensive diatribe quoted above. In a pig’s freckle they will. On the contrary, if Alan said it then it is probably consistent with the “Australian Way.”

Permanent under-class in Australia

My observations here have a very recent ancestry. Within only a few months I have commented separately on the recent riots in France and on what I think is the evolution of an increasing and permanent under-class in Australia . It seems to me that the theme running through all three issues — the riots in France and Sydney and the idea of an under-class — is not one of race but of alienation. Alienation due to opportunity lost or ignored or never offered or sought whether for reasons of familial dysfunction, peer group ethos, educational problems or whatever other reasons. Thousands of young Australians don’t feel part of the socalled mainstream. They have been left behind and they know it and feel it and they are railing against it in the only way the know how — by mindless vandalism, thuggery, heavy drinking, a bit of rape here and some robbery there and whatever else takes their fancy. This is a problem that will not go away and I cannot readily think of a way to address it that has any prospect of effecting substantive positive change in the short term.

Bring back national service? I don’t think so. That would be costly and that could lead to cuts in the capacity to buy votes. Some kind of obligatory community service? No, there would be something wrong with that too. A massive overhaul of the education systems to accommodate those who would otherwise be a lost generation in a succession of lost generations? I doubt it — the education bureaucrats probably think they’ve got it well covered already. Or maybe we let nature take it course and have compound living for those who can afford it — high walls, guarded entrances and the rest — as is common in the United States and reportedly increasing in other parts of the world. The rest us of would take pot luck and wait for an over-worked police force to send a patrol car through every second Shrove Tuesday.

Low-browed, narrow-eyed, splay-nosed, gormless political dingaling

In my lifetime the longest serving governments have been those of Menzies, Fraser, Hawke and Howard. They all did a few useful things, the latter two rather more than the first two named, but basically they all merely presided over a continuing growth and affluence. The secret was not so much what they did but what they didn’t do. Mostly, they didn’t interfere too much, thankfully. Hawke and Keating, especially Keating — both as Treasurer and Prime Minister — mostly kept their distance but they did intrude in the area of economic and financial policy and the nation is the better for it, as was Howard’s task made easier when he took over. However, none of these governments addressed the evolving social problems that are becoming so starkly evident now and, apart perhaps from some welfare and related groups, no one has been making any noise about it. Indeed, apart from a few platitudes about the “Australian Way”, no one has taken up an issue that has clearly been smouldering for quite a few years.

Now all governments — federal and state — really do need to address this social problem because, if it is allowed to compound, we shall be in a very serious mess.

And if any low-browed, narrow-eyed, splay-nosed, gormless political dingaling mentions the “Australian Way” again I shall personally visit him in the dead of night with my elastrator and delight in hearing him speak thereafter with a very squeaky voice. I’m not sure what I’ll do if it’s a woman!