It is sad, but probably indicative of the times, that I’m starting my first Senate Diary entry for 2018 by going back to a tired and tattered old topic that dominated the headlines (again) this time last year.
Australia Day. Invasion Day. Why January 26 is an insult to Indigenous Australians. The Greens have made a stand and their new Victorian MP, Lidia Thorpe, has called for flags to be flown at half-mast tomorrow in mourning. (I don’t agree with that, but am appalled by the rape threats to her and hope the perpetrator is arrested and charged soon).
But, on moving Australia Day: I am against it. As I said, when opposing it in the Senate last year: I am sure there are plenty of Native Americans who don’t have much to celebrate on July 4. Independence Day from the British didn’t bring them much independence from the reservations.
And if you change the date? Move it to, say, February 26 or April 14 ? Can you guarantee there wasn’t some indignity, even atrocity, afflicted on an Indigenous Australian on that day 200 years ago? I am not opposed to a Mabo Day — like the Martin Luther King Jr. day in the US.
On Australia Day 2017, as a new senator, I was honoured to be invited to a naturalisation ceremony at the Coburg Town Hall in Melbourne. (The last time I was near that town hall was on the way to the adjacent Pentridge Prison in a paddy wagon, but that’s another story).
The first person I met was an Aboriginal elder. She asked for a selfie — as we stood under an Aboriginal flag and the Australian flag — which she tweeted. We then acknowledged Indigenous people and paid tribute to their elders. And then we all celebrated Australia. The Greens have no hope of winning this one. Nor should they.
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Over the summer break, I’m sure a lot of people played Trivial Pursuit. On my recent visit to the Solomon Islands as part of a parliamentary delegation, we traded a lot of political trivia as our wagon bounced in and out of pot-holes and ploughed through rivers.
I thought I had a doozy: What do Tony Abbott and Kristina Keneally have in common?
The answer? Both have used the word “awful” recently to describe the Turnbull government.
She used it, November 14, 2017, when launching her unsuccessful bid to replace John Alexander in Bennelong.
Keneally said: “… Stand up and say to Malcolm Turnbull: ‘Your government is awful’.”
Abbott said it to me, a month later, December 15, 2017, at a media function the day before the Bennelong byelection.
Abbott said: “This has been a pretty awful government”.
An extraordinarily indiscreet thing to say to another politician, a crossbencher, whom he advised in a phone message last year to “shut the fuck up”. Obviously, I haven’t.
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Speaking of Keneally. I’m sure her replacing Sam Dastyari was in the Shorten package when she agreed to “ave-a-go” in Bennelong. I think she will do well. Better than some union hack whose turn, supposedly, it was.
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“Kastom”. It’s a six-letter word I learned over the summer break — and it depressed the hell out of me. Last week, as I mentioned earlier, I went to the Solomon Islands to see what NGOs like Save the Children, World Vision and Oxfam were doing in that necklace of Pacific Islands and to see how our Australian foreign aid dollars are being spent.
One topic of discussion was so important to me that I volunteered to invite myself and pay my own way. The topic was domestic violence which, regrettably, is seared into island male-superiority culture to the extent that about 70% of Solomon Island women have experienced it. Also discussed was the corollary of sexual exploitation of young girls with 13-year-olds being married off or sent to work in logging camps, or with foreign fishermen, where cooking and cleaning duties extend to sex. And, often, unwanted teenage pregnancies.
That’s where the pidgin English “kastom” comes in. The Solomon Island national government has tightened child exploitation laws recently and a case of human trafficking is currently before the courts. But under the kastom system — which translates as “custom resolution” or “community resolution” — child rapists are being absolved by the payment of as little as $50 in Solomon Islands dollars — about $6 US. This practice is increasing because of “community by-laws” sanctioned by police.
There are 900 islands in the Solomons, about 300 of them inhabited. Many people rarely see a policeman. If a complaint is made of sexual exploitation of a child, the village chief, or village elders, negotiate between the offender and the parents. Hush money is paid. The matter is over. That’s kastom.
The victim has no say. And a violated child never gets to talk to a police officer. The case never gets to court. Justice is never done.
Add that to the endemic corruption in that country and you’ll understand why I came away feeling forlorn.
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And thank you Crikey readers. My new book Hinch vs Canberra — based on these Crikey Senate Diary epistles — was the MUP No.1 bestseller over Christmas. But then, you read it here first. And it’s great to be back. DH
Senator Hinch, the only reason you offered in this article as to why January 26 might not be appropriate to celebrate Australia Day is that the date “is an insult to Indigenous Australians”. You don’t agree, of course and apparently you have met a few Aborigines and they aren’t insulted so that’s good enough for you. Sounds like you don’t really have any skin in the game. So you won’t feel miffed if, as time goes by, each and every 26th January is marked by ever increasing protests, rallies, graffiti in the streets and arguments with politicians who simply refuse to engage in a conversation because it is a “tired and tattered old topic” – a bit like reconciliation, no doubt. If our democracy decided, down the track, that another date for the celebration of a united Australia had been found, would you still cling to the old colonialist attitude or would you roll over without a whimper, even for a suggestion from the Greens?
I don’t think I agree with you about Australia Day. It has bugger all to do with Australia as such. My Aboriginal friends will celebrate Australia tomorrow, but they do not feel good about it. Your comments about Tony Abbott simply reflect the destructive unpleasantness of his personality. The Turnbull government is bloody awful until you look at Abbott’s which was even worse. The man has way too much ego. His comments about how great the first fleet has been for Aboriginals is a case in point. I allow they could have been taken over by the Portuguese or the Dutch who were even worse, though the French might have been an improvement, but to see the way that our first people were treated since federation is a matter of shame. Tony loves the military so let him see the story of Len Waters or Reg Saunders. The trouble is most politicians and a good many other Australians, don’t know any ordinary blackfellas, only official or TV ones. One of our great old blokes in my town shore sheep with Len Waters who was a fighter pilot in WW II, but too black to be a civilian one in Queensland. Yeah it was real good for Len eh? Old Tom’s uncle was bashed and killed in the main street of a nearby town and noone was even charged, though it was in plain view. Good for him too I suppose. Then there is my friend Ali from Darwin who heads for the long grass on the 26th, she reckons she’s safer there without the redneck flag drapers. She said “its no place for a blackfella there mate.”
Why bother changing the date, it will only have to be changed again when China or India invade us.
What a puerile comparison, America’s Independence Day and our, hopelessly contrived, Australia Day. The Yanks celebrate Columbus Day and the 4th of July. Perhaps we can do the same. Let’s have Cook’s Day (22nd of August) and Australia Day. But who actually gives a rat’s freckle about the date the First Fleet landed at Port Jackson? Surely we can find something more relevant in our history than the monumental cock-up of the First Fleet?
Ironic that US citizens celebrate Columbus day, yet the man never set foot on what is now the USA.
We could chose several dates like that:
April 19 – Captain Cook sighted Australia in 1770
January 5 – William Dampier anchored off WA in 1688
October 25 – Dirk Hartog landed on an island off WA in 1616
February 26 – Willem Janszoon landed on Cape York in 1606
Mark Kenny at the Age/SMH suggested May 9 – the day the the Parliament of Australia first sat (also first sitting in Canberra and in the new Parliament House).
The Constitution of Australia Act passed UK Parliament on July 9, 1900, and passed into law on January 1, 1901 – when the country truly became Australia.
Couldn’t agree more. To me, 26 January should be called NSW Day, the continent being, at that time certainly not inhabited by Europeans. We became the recognisable nation of Australia on 1 January 1901, so the date of the first sitting of Parliament is an excellent suggestion. Alternatively, make a commitment to change Australia Day on the date we become a Republic, which will be inevitable under some decent leadership and are rid of the vacillating ego bag we have as a PM.
I’m 60. For the majority of my life, Australia Day passed by without a thought to go on a ferry race, see fireworks or raise a flag. Without a thought about ‘Australia’ – or any other concept of the imagination, like ‘patriot’ (eek!), or events from 200 years ago, equally.
Then along came John Howard et al.
You wanted a special day to ‘celebrate’ – like those other well-known ‘patriotic’ peoples around the globe? Enjoy it, change it, I don’t care: I’ll just keep ignoring it.
Same electme, not quite as old, but Australia Day was always celebrated in its silence and lack of national idiocy, and that is the Australia that I am part of.
These nationalistic, jingoistic celebrations are anathema to what I thought Australia was.
Thanks Derryn, a typically inept non-argument for keeping 26th January as a day of celebration.
So true. I thought I was alone thinking this. It was never like like this before Howard. Ditto Anzac day. How awful we’ve become.
Why does Crikey always publish Hinch? It’s such a difficult read. I’d prefer to read what the cross bench are thinking. Why not have a random selection of pieces from them instead of this plonker?
Me four, guys. The monster that grew to be Anzac Day was an eye opener – fascinating to watch- but the NSW government ads about Australia Day this year raised my eyebrows. Perhaps the ads have been going for years and I just didn’t know because I don’t watch free to air television.