Australians all let us rejoice, For we are young as free, We've golden soil and wealth for toil, Our home is girt by sea, Our land abounds in nature's gifts, Of beauty, rich and rare, In history's page let every stage, Advance Australia fair.
Ahhh the anthem of a nation, such a wonderful song isn’t it. It represents a whole country and what they essentially stand for. It is an expression of their national identity. Huh , National identity, what exactly is a national identity? Good evening ladies and gentlemen, tonight I'd like to inform you on the chains that attach us to a racist society and the issues as to why we can’t run away from them. Let's take this back to year 10 history, the first thing that I remember is that Australia had been inhabited for roughly 70,000 years before it was discovered, it was then colonised by the British Monarchy when in 1770 Sir Captain James Cook claimed possession of the East Coast of Australia regarding it as ‘Terra Nullius’, meaning he believed Australia was uninhabited and unoccupied. Then the first fleet arrived with Captain Arthur Phillip bringing in over a thousand convicts and landing at sydney cove. Finally, in the 10 years that ensued, about 90% of the previously existing 750,000 indigenous australians died due to factors such as, the introduction of new diseases, acquisitions of indigenous land, and violent conflict between the indigenous population and the colonisers. Well there’s your history lesson for the day, i guess we figured out our national identity. It was all just a bunch of colonisers being big meanies. I guess we can all go home now.
Wait, what about me, I wasn’t part of the first fleet, my parents certainly weren’t, not even my grandparents. If I’m a first generation Australian citizen in my family, then where does that put me in the whole national identity equation? I’m not the only first gen Australian citizen, and I doubt I’ll be the last, so how do ‘foreigners’ fit into this Australian Identity? Australians are often seen as battlers, we always give it a ‘fair go’, according to the ABC we are characterised by our egalitarianism and mateship. Yet, how is every second post in the Sydney morning herald and the guardian about racist attitudes towards immigrants, indigenous Australians, and even people of different religious backgrounds. We aren’t chained by our national identity but by the corrupted leaders that funded it.
Thinking back to the Cronulla riots, I was only a couple years old, but, on the morning of 11 December 2005, thousands of people went down to Cronulla after text messages calling for a “Leb and Wog bashing day” had been shared widely, all before Iphones were even invented. In the hours that followed, a number of people were attacked and images of the violent brawls circulated around the world. Some countries even issued travel warnings for Australia. Nearly two decades later and extremism in Australia is as popular as ever. I mean on Australia Day this year a group of around 40 men dressed in black burned a cross and chanted slogans such as ‘white power’. Independent researcher on far-right extremism and conspiracies Kazz Ross said “Joining a group where you are going out camping and you’re hiking and you’re singing songs together and you’re working out at the gym looks very wholesome, but unfortunately there is a very serious racist and anti-Semitic motivation behind it.” Dr Ross declared that the Covid-19 lockdowns of last year had created a fertile recruiting environment for white supremacist groups, as people were craving a sense of belonging and camaraderie. Even if they run, you can never escape the brutal facts.
You’d think that after 15 years maybe people can understand that racism isn’t tolerable, so tell me why a survey conducted this year has revealed that nearly one-in-five chinese australians have been threatened or attacked in the past year. Tell me why a three year old child was told by a group of girls she couldn’t play with them because she was brown. Tell me why a young woman was told, “get out of this country, you don’t belong here” for wearing a niqab on a Sydney beach. Tell me why a group of Jewish girls were threatened to get there throats slit and had insults yelled at them including “kill the jews'' and “heil hitler'' while travelling home from school, yet charges were laid off because the offenders were drunk at the time and apparently not in there right minds. And let's not even begin to talk about Adam Goodes, the man was booed by crowds at his game and on top of that reporters argued that the booing wasn’t because of the colour of his skin, it was because he pointed a finger at a girl. A girl who racially abused him and called him an ‘ape’, but because it was a little girl, “you can’t do that, you’re a public figure.” This seemingly never ending cycle of racism and discrimination seems to be tarnishing our National identity, it really weighs a country down when people willing to contribute themselves to your growing society are basically bullied and told there not good enough because of the colour of their skin or because of the multiple, singular or non existent gods that they believe in.
How can we ever come first when our past and honestly blindsided present is chaining us to the ground, the ground that we don’t even own technically. But I must admit a light jog is beginning to form. If you haven’t noticed, approximately 50 #racism not welcome signs have been erected all throughout the inner west as part of an initiative to encourage the community to talk about the daily racism that exists. Also, as of January 1st, we’ve been singing the national anthem wrong. Well it’s not exactly our fault, at the start of the year the government officially altered the song's second line. This was done as an official acknowledgement to indigenous Australians, finally making anyone who listens or sings the song aware of the fact that we aren’t exactly a young nation, considering Australia is home to one of the oldest living cultures in the world. However, personally this doesn’t only bring unity between a profound and violent past between indigenous australians and the colonisers, but also between immigrants and refugees and their unity to a new found homeland that is safe and hopefully willing to accept them. And so I sing with pride and a little more knowledge about my island home. Australia all let us rejoice, for we are one and free.
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