Kevin Murray writes: Taking Guy Rundle’s point about Stan Grant as a seasoned media performer in “Stan Grant affair: progressives get a wake-up call, others hit the snooze button”, I think we should credit him the smarts for his send-off on his final Q+A. Looking for maximum impact, he intuited that we were looking for some ubuntu moment, whereby the victim becomes a unifying force. Yindyamarra deserves to become part of our vocabulary as a political circuit-breaker. It has the same potential as Gandhi’s satyagraha or, dare I say, Christ’s turning the other cheek.
I certainly took issue with Grant’s grandstanding against China, but it did show that he could read the room.
It’s almost impossible to imagine yindyamarra as a social media meme. But that may be the point. It’s about saying the word in someone’s face. I hope it becomes part of our political theatre, building on Anthony Albanese’s “gratitude”.
John Millard writes: Guy Rundle’s piece could only be written, I feel, by a white guy. I appreciate that it is truly hard or perhaps impossible for us white guys to ever go close to walking in the shoes of a Black guy like Grant or his people. It is far easier to pretend that we can and write as if we know what we are talking about.
John Lyons writes: Rundle is right. I am still voting Yes.
Rob Addington writes: I’m not a fan of Stan Grant and it has nothing to do with his heritage. It is his long-winded opinions on anything and everything that end up being about him. I’m also not a fan of Andrew Bolt, Paul Murray, David Speers, Peta Credlin and others for a variety of reasons — but mainly because I disagree with their approach to issues. Guy Rundle has explained why I feel this way and I thank him for that. (And his revelations on Patricia Karvelas are truly fascinating.)
Andrew Dunn writes: Rundle is simply brilliant. (Will we see a reinvented Stan Grant appear from the ashes now — similar to Karvelas’s new persona?)
Hildegard Matulin writes: A voice of reason at last. Both Stan Grant and the ABC had questions to answer. Both are supposed to present both sides of an argument. Grant as an ABC employee should present unbiased facts.
I was going to vote Yes for the Voice, but now I am unsure. I am over the fact that we are supposed to feel guilty for the past and colonisation. History shows that when countries were invaded the inhabitants were mainly annihilated or made slaves — not a nice fact, but we can’t change it.
My parents were made to leave their country of birth and migrated to Australia. It wasn’t easy and they weren’t welcomed by the locals, but they survived. I think the Indigenous peoples were treated very badly and many atrocious things were perpetrated. But I am beginning to wonder if one can trust those at the top. Even Indigenous people are not agreeing, so I am totally confused.
Keith Lister writes: I read Rundle’s article right through to the end. Aced it.
Dominic Quigley writes: Guy Rundle has got it right and Christopher Warren (“The ABC doesn’t need News Corp — News Corp needs the ABC”) has got it wrong. I was relieved and pleased to see Crikey present such opposing views on the ABC and the Stan Grant resignation on the same page. How refreshing to have that sort of balance.
I am not about to defend The Australian as I don’t read it, and I will not enter the debate about racism and the media. However, I am deeply disillusioned with what the ABC does these days because it is so trite, heavy-handed and so obviously tokenistic in the way it tries to deliver a more inclusive and representative view of our diverse society. Its intentions are commendable but its delivery is a failure.
Stuart Littlemore and David Salter summed up the problems at our national broadcaster accurately in their recent article. There are so many examples of conflicted editorial decisions in news and current affairs, so many appalling mistakes, so much inept and vacuous news reporting. The elevated status of many of its “senior” journalists that makes them the story is exactly what the commercial media have been doing for years. That was once anathema to the ABC. This is one of the reasons we now have the Stan Grant affair. The editorialising by many of its journalists is so blatant that they have clearly lost the ability to make the distinction between news and opinion.
As a tertiary-educated, inner-city “boomer” of the left (a member of a significant ABC demographic) I once exclusively tuned into ABC radio and television as my primary source of news, current affairs and entertainment. These days that rarely happens. I am one of the thousands who have drifted away in disillusionment and disappointment at the self-indulgence and self-reinforcing agenda of a “fake left” that has an embarrassing disregard for what really matters to so many Australian families who are struggling with the realities of living in a very unequal society.
Hildegard Matulin writes about guilt. I have never heard Stan try to make anyone feel guilty and I’ve never had anyone from a First Nation try to make me feel guilty about Australia’s colonial history.
I have, however, felt guilt about our history and it was my friends and colleagues from First Nations who offered me support as I worked my way through what is a normal human emotion. Their understanding, support and patience is something I will never forget. At the time I found their generosity unfathomable. But, I understand it now and I recognize it in Stan’s work and the way he framed his ‘farewell for now’.
I think Australia’s dominant culture has a very unhealthy relationship with guilt. It scares us so we don’t sit with, examine it and work our way through it, determining whether it is legitimate or not, and how we come to terms with it if it is legitimate.
It’s a shame the referendum civics education can’t also deliver us some help with guilt. The Yes vote would be overwhelming if we could stop fearing guilt and our entire nation would be much healthier if individuals could understand and deal with their guilt wherever it comes from.
One needs to be careful about extrapolating personal feelings of ‘guilt about our history’ to the entire population
I have been hearing these claims about First Nations trying to make everyone else feel guilty since the bi-centenary and I’ve lived in quite a few places in all those years. It’s not the entire population talking this way but it’s a significant proportion of us and in my experience, it shuts down genuine conversations very quickly.
Hildegard Matulin writes about “guilt” – the Voice to Parliament is not about guilt, but enabling a place that when Indigenous Australians speak, politicians listen. The failure of listening led to children being stolen from their families (because patriarchal English saw children as possessions). The resulting intergenerational trauma has meant that Indigenous Australians became the most incarcerated people on the planet. Failure to listen led to land being stolen while the world’s oldest agricultural practice was ignored. One consequence of our deafness has been catastrophic fires, housing built on flood plains and the destruction of habitat.
If properly implemented the Voice to Parliament will not only benefit Indigenous Australians. It will benefit all
Are we supposed to feel guilty about colonisation and Australia’s past? No. Or possibly yes… Guilt exists to deter us from repeating the hurtful things we may have done. Most of us have never dispossessed a First Nations tribe of their land or murdered an Aboriginal Australian. On the other hand, feeling a certain amount of guilt regarding the actions of our ancestors (or forebears in the case of those of us who migrated to Australia from elsewhere) is fine if it works to prevent us from repeating their crimes.
While guilt may not be necessary, awareness is. Your backyard, that you have to keep mowing because the grass keeps growing out of control? Good soil. It was also good soil when it was the larder of a tribe – the tribe who were driven from it (or wiped out) so that a farmer could claim it for his descendants to subdivide.
It is no different to the case of those artworks stolen from Jews by Nazis that end up in collections. The current owner paid good money to buy the painting, but no matter how many hands it may have passed through and how many receipts it may have accumulated with those ownership changes it remains stolen property. The original owners of the painting may have been murdered in the acquisition, there may even be no surviving claimants by now, but every time you look at that painting (or out of your back window) you should remember how it came to be yours.
Interesting also how Grant seemed to have the approval of many RW political and media conservatives with their followers (when he toes the line), but when he ventures into Aboriginal history, rights and the Voice, he gets crucified, yet the same elites with power don’t need to be public and get their hands dirty, just leave it to anonymous RW activists on social media etc….
As a child, born towards the end of WW2, I was taught Australian history. This was totally about Captain Cook, the “discovery” of Australia, Governor Phillip, & the explorers. Nothing focussed on the dispossession, subjugation & annihilation of our indigenous original Australians. A number of early white Australians were disgusting criminals, some like Ben Boyd had places named in their honour – due to the facts being acknowledged, Ben Boyd National Park has now been re-named.
I recall with shame & disgust, at the age of about 16, watching a newsreel at the State Newsreel Theatre in Sydney, a film of terrified little Aboriginal children being rounded up, while their equally terrified distraught parents tried to prevent them from being taken by authorities. The intent waa to integrate & convert them into “nice” citizens like us Anglo-Saxon Australians. The very pompous BBC voice over stated that this was necessary for their well-being. We now have had to acknowledge that many of those children were abused, enslaved, punished for speaking in their own language & they & their families have suffered unbearable grief as a result.
Theft of wages by white employees was endemic. I recall as a young adult, when pastoralists reacted with horror at the idea that Aboriginal stockmen & workers were entitled to be paid the same wage as non-aboriginal stockmen & workers, instead of a quantity of flour, sugar, tobacco etc. The world didn’t fall apart & the pastoralists still survived when they were forced to pay the same rate despite ethnicity. However, many indigenous workers were robbed of money owed that was supposed to be paid into a trust arrangement.
I remember when Aboriginal men who fought for this country in wars side by side with white Australians, were refused entry to RSL clubs because they were Aboriginal.
My late husband had relatives well-known in the Moree district. We visited them for a weekend with his parents early in our marriage & I felt thoroughly ashamed at their attitude to the Aboriginal people there. They weren’t allowed into the mineral bathes & we observed the discrimination they suffered in shops when 2 Aboriginal children waited patiently to be served while every Anglo who came in after them was served first.
I remember when Aboriginal people were first included in the Census, & were allowed to vote in elections. They hadn’t been considered to be human beings like “us”.
I wasn’t personally responsible for the injustices suffered by our 1st Australians, but we owe them a historical debt & it will add further shame to this country if we don’t vote YES in the coming referendum.