THE PRIEST opened his Mass yesterday by calling on those present to celebrate Australia’s ‘freedom, peace and prosperity’ – a little jarring and a stretch of the truth in our recessed, fragmented, tyrannical post-covid nation. There was then the inevitable reference to Australia Day being ‘complex’ for many people.
Oh dear. That was an immediate red flag.
Then a member of the congregation read out an Australia Day ‘prayer’ devised by something called the Gospel Coalition. The first few paragraphs capture the flavour:
‘Gracious heavenly Father, We thank and praise you for your creation of this world, including this land of Australia. We praise you for its beauty and its bounty, for mountains, hills and plains, for rivers, creeks and seas, and wonderful variety of animals, birds and sea-creatures.
‘We praise you for the peoples to whom you first entrusted this land, each one made in your image, and all loved by you. We thank you for their careful management of the land, for the strength of their communal life, and the richness of their culture.
‘We lament the damage done to them by the arrival of the British in 1788. For the loss of life, land, language, livelihood, culture, and the damage done to structures of their communities. We grieve the sins of coveting, theft and murder committed by the invaders, and their failure to recognise the God-given human dignity and rights of the indigenous people. We lament the damage done to this land by greed, bad management, arrogance and ignorance. We pray that indigenous people may find their rightful place as citizens, and that their voices would be heard in our society. We pray that you would help us close the gap in the provision of health, education, housing, justice, and opportunity.’
It continues like this for pages. At this stage, I got up and walked out. This was disgusting, even by the Australian Catholic Church’s declining standards. And it isn’t remotely truthful. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to say, ‘You are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts.’
For many of us, Australia Day has lost its shimmer. It has become something to be dreaded. Another cultural battleground. Many of us are weary from the fight. The left never is.
We have the ritual platitudes, of course. Let’s all just get along. Like we used to. Professor Jennifer Westacott, the chancellor of Western Sydney University, issued a heartfelt plea for good old Aussie ‘mateship’, arguing that we are ‘losing the plot on how to be Australian’.
Well, there is a reason for this, as we shall see. Then there are the haters. We have the ritual spray painting and damaging of Captain Cook statues. We have the ‘invasion day’ memes. And the invasion day marches. The Guardian helpfully provided a ‘guide’ to invasion protest rallies. These marches tend to blend with the regular anti-Israel marches. It is all about colonialism, apparently. Australia is now regarded as one of the least-safe countries for a Jewish person to live.
We have the cancellation of state-run Australia Day events. Last year we had Woolworths refusing to sell Australia Day gear. We have (foreign-owned) Australian hospitality groups shunning the national day in favour of ‘January Long Weekend’ events.
We even have TV stations referring to Australians as ‘first nations people and non-first nation peoples’. The latter is us! Kow-towing to the approved messaging on putting Whitey in his subordinate place. Sporting an Australian flag T-shirt is seen as a political act.
What the ‘let’s all just be friends’ argument seems to miss is that:
- Half of all current Australians are the children of at least one parent born overseas;
- A third of current Australians were born overseas;
- Many of those who come here now have not the remotest desire to blend in and absorb and display traditional Aussie traits;
- Second and third on the list of originating migrant countries are India and China (yes, astonishingly, Britain is still number one);
- Most newcomers don’t speak English;
- Some who come already hate us before they get here;
- There are no-go zones based on racial lines and these areas are often seedbeds of terrorism;
- It is at least arguable that it is conscious progressivist policy to replace the Australia that once was with a totally new lot of people.
Couldn’t we all just get along? Try this for an explanation. We are losing the plot on how to be Australians because half of us aren’t Australians!
The reason that Australia Day is ‘complex’ for many people is there are three identifiable, distinct and quite sizable groupings with no interest in the niceness aspirations of the unity-pleaders. There are the Aborigines who are taught that we invaded ‘their’ country, and that they must have their own, separate country. A whole category of people are mainly here for the welfare and ‘economic’ benefits, not because they want to be Australian. Then there are the globalist metros who happen, for the moment, to be camped down under.
Just as importantly, we have changed the mindset of those already here.
The population replacement has been aided and abetted by several generations of diversity re-education for the common people delivered by politicians, HR departments, schools, universities, NGOs and, as we have seen, the churches. We have been gaslit into resenting our country. The nostalgic brigade pining for the good old Australia Days don’t seem to understand that division has been baked into our culture by open borders policies, resented and opposed – just as in the Mother Country – by much of the existing population, and by the ideology of multiculturalism, a 1970s-crafted epic fail that still cannot be discarded or even critiqued. Diversity is patently not our strength. Diversity, especially delivered top-down by the ruling class, has proven to be our great weakness.
Of course, the whole idea that Australia is ‘multi-cultural’ is itself a canard. Australia is multi-mono-cultural. A nation of tribes all living as if the other tribes didn’t exist. The great hope of the diversity pioneers was that a rich ‘coming together’ of cultures would add up and seamlessly create something greater than the whole. As Mark Steyn says, demography is everything.
And yet, all is, apparently, not lost for the lucky country. The Australian reported yesterday: ‘Australia Day has a new lease of life, with citizenship ceremonies, beach parties, barbecues and events of all kinds attracting record turnouts . . . Australia Day is back, friends. Our national day of celebration has been reclaimed by the not-so-silent majority who partied on the beaches.’
Perhaps our message to Old Blighty is still ‘thanks for coming’. Perhaps too there is a vague whiff of Trump empowerment in the air. But the green shoots of recovered patriotism need much watering, and the powers-that-be are not playing that game. The sullen, silent congregation that heard that appalling ‘Australia Day prayer’ may well have been thinking, as I was, ‘What the hell?’
What they do next will be the key to any sustained revival down under.
