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Journal of a Futurist - 29 August 2005
Retreat Australia Fair
The war on terror is over and we lost. The switch on the nation’s psyche has shifted from alert to alarmed to alarming. Islamic schools will be “forced to teach Australian values”, which has the ring of an oxymoron. Can tolerance be enforced? Cabinet ministers are urging Muslims who don’t share “Australian values” to deport themselves.
This from a government with a history of treating values as lumps of lard; malleable, smelly and non core. It doesn’t even value diversity of thought, which is why our cultural bodies are stacked with Yes Minister types, why our pesky Imams were banned from last week’s Muslim Summit. So what are the values which go to the heart of being a true blue Aussie in a terrorised world?
1. Mateship? Not anymore. Most Sentimental Blokes have vanished in the swamp that was once the Jolly Swagman’s billabong. The term mate is derided. These days we are all clients, consumers and competitors.
Martin Sharp, Sydney Oz, early 60’s
FEAR SILENCE LYING SUBMISSION
2. Owning Up? Believe it or not, at my bleak Sydney boarding school in the fifties it was the “done thing” for a boy to admit a breach of regulations in order to protect his ‘house’ from a bad reputation and his colleagues from a caning. Don’t try this in public life.
3. Free speech? For an Imam to speculate that blame for the terrible 9/11 attacks on America may not fall solely on the head of Osama bin Laden is to invite media savaging and a knock on the door from ASIO, our secret police. ASIO can interrogate him in secret for seven days. A recipient of such a visit who mentions it to anyone, including his employer or partner, can be jailed – as can a journalist who reports it. That our new ambassador to Washington is the former head of ASIO, as opposed to a seasoned diplomat, is a clue to what our Government most values – secrecy and fear.
FREE THINKERS DON’T GET PAID
4. Free media? Up to a point. Mass media are free in the sense they can treat outsiders with disdain, as was proved yet again when it was revealed how Channel 7 edited the taped comments of a young Muslim to mean his people “would never integrate”. The Australian media’s role is shopping promotions, beat-ups and light entertainment: sport, gossip, stock shifts, celebrity trials, soft porn and big ticket “must see” events. Don’t mention the destruction of Fallujah, let’s “create the perfect felafel”. I was once drawn to media as philosophy on the run, a search for truth, which sounds hopelessly quaint. Today the search is for gold. Even in the best papers, stuffy commentators still claim there is “no anti Iraqi war movement”, while the last of Australia’s free thinkers are confined to the letters pages.
5 Innocent till proved guilty? As far as immigration authorities are concerned, this value is not only “non core”, it is non existent. For a department tasked with screening the suitability of those aspiring to settle here, its record of oppression has shown that its own staff are far less desirable citizens than the people on whom they pass judgement.
6.Human Rights? Each year the UN Human Rights Commissioner castigates Australia’s record in this area, as does Amnesty International, to the indifference of our leaders.
7. Truth? Let’s not waste words.
8. Love of the land? Our land, sure, mainly in the sense of its real estate, the parks and beaches, but not the land of Earth as a whole. We spurned Kyoto and joined Uncle Sam’s Big Polluters Club, with no targets, no worries and no sense of obligation to those whose future our fossil fuel fumes have helped befoul.
HELP! MY FLAGPOLE DON’T FUNCTION
9. Multiculturalism? Despite much self congratulation about our openness to other cultures, some of which was once justified, a festering undercurrent of racism often spills into the mainstream. From the days of Pauline Hanson to the recent tabloid panica over nutty booklets in mosques, a surprising number of short fused citizens still display nostalgia for the White Australia Policy.
If none of the above are candidates for the new values curriculum, what’s left?
1. Nationalism. From this year all primary and secondary schools need to possess a “functioning flagpole” as a condition of receiving Government funding. Children will swear allegiance. Aussie Aussie Aussie. Fortress Oz.
2. Militarism. Brass bands, big ships, more weapons, car parks at Gallipoli for big shots, John Howard in body armour, Kim Beazley on the poop deck, more pre-emptive strikes, non stop surveillance, occupation of foreign lands. All to preserve our independence, except that the functionality of our Defence system depends on total integration with US forces and subservience to the Pentagon’s gameplan.
3. God Bless America. Our new core value. Coffee has usurped tea, torture has usurped Geneva, military tribunals have usurped justice. How long before Australia bombs its first Iraqi wedding party, then claims the musicians were suicide bombers?
When John Howard received the Woodrow Wilson award, many were perplexed, despite the standing ovation. This award is for those who have “shown a special commitment to seeking out informed opinions and thoughtful views," which is exactly what George Bush and John Howard avoid. By dismissing the broad church intelligentsia as elites, both leaders depend for advice on the biased, the greedy and the ill informed, which is why Afghanistan is back in the opium trade, Iraq is a bloodbath and terrorism is out of control.
What’s missing from today’s Australian values is the widespread participation in public life. When this is absent, as Plato pointed out, we end up with the kind of leaders who are much worse than ourselves. Even worse than me.
The latest toll since the invasion of Iraq began, over half of those killed have been women and children. Full story, go to UPI Iraqi civilian casualties
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Update 21 March 2005
Richard's writings
(image from The Guardian, 22 September 04)
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