Australia was invented

Malcolm Turnbull appeared on Channel Ten’s The Panel on Australia Day. Panellist, Waleed Aly chided the PM for his remark that ‘there has never been a more exciting time to be an Australian’. Aly suggested that women, Aborigines and the disabled would disagree. Turnbull missed a great opportunity to go for Aly’s jugular. The PM should have told Aly that in much of the Muslim world, for which Aly is a pin-up boy, women are treated as chattels, Aborigines have long ceased to exist, and the disabled are regarded as freaks.The Left must be tackled for their persistent abuse of the liberality afforded them by the West. Take Aboriginal politics. On Australian Day, hundreds of Australians of Aboriginal descent mounted protests against the descendants of settlers who ‘invaded’ Australia on 26 January 1788. Most of those protesting would be of mixed descent, so they were protesting against their own families. The fact that from 1788 a vastly different group of people arrived in Australia than those who had traditionally inhabited the continent does not mean that Australians owe a debt to the original inhabitants. To believe that is to believe that Australia was discovered holus bolus. In fact, Australia was invented.

Genius of The Enlightenment

Building on the landscape and within the climate that the Australian continent and its original inhabitants presented, the British applied the genius of The Enlightenment, including immense military power, centralised administration and governance, to create Australia. There was no nation, nor nations, prior to European settlement. Creating the Australian nation has been the work of settlers and original inhabitants, using the best and rejecting the worst ideas from the world. Tribalism was swept aside and, despite massive further immigration, has been kept at bay. Neither has socialism taken root in Australia. Instead, a powerful, though limited and benign state, built around a democratically elected government, has taken root. Australia has been fortunate never to fight a war of independence nor a civil war. And yet the benefits of such conflict, where they are won, namely self-rule and freedom from oppression, have been achieved without conflict. Australia has become one of the world’s wealthiest and most liberal nations, able to defend against those who would destroy it, including its internal enemies.Australians, of whatever descent, have benefited mightily from the Australian invention. Those who marched on Australia Day, along with those who would recognise Aborigines in the Australian Constitution, seek to use descent as an excuse for privilege. Using descent (race or culture) for privilege is only marginally better than using it for prejudice.

Do the crime, do the time

To illustrate the mind-set, consider that once great organisation, Amnesty International, which has joined with others in the ‘Change the Record Coalition’ to lower incarceration rates among Aborigines to those experienced by the rest of the community. Unfortunately, Amnesty confuses justice and equality before the law. It proclaims that ‘there is an urgent need for laws and policies to reduce the escalating numbers of ATSI people being imprisoned’. So far as I am concerned, there is no human right in avoiding a jail term if you have been found guilty of committing a crime and sentenced to serve time in jail by a judge of an Australian court. Amnesty, and those who took to the streets in protest, should ponder the lives of two Australians: one who has benefited from integration, the other who has been damned by tribalism.The first, typically, is a person of slight Aboriginal descent, who, left to their own devices, would find their own path in life with an adequate income, a chance to raise a family and contribute to the common good. Many such people feature in our media on a regular basis as graduates, assisted by scholarships awarded on the basis of descent. Such awards undermine merit. The impact of those monies, by and large, is to assist recipients (at great cost) to move from the working class to the professional class. The second is a 12-year-old girl of Aboriginal descent who has been administered a long acting reversible contraceptive by a nurse at the behest of the elders of her community. This common event in remote Aboriginal communities is designed to protect young girls from pregnancy. Of course, it does not protect them from sexual intercourse, other forms of abuse, or sexually transmitted disease. I believe that, in too many instances, the contraceptive is removed when the girl reaches the age when intercourse can occur legally, and if children result, starting her on a path to a life on welfare.

Wishing the British had not arrived in 1788, or seeking a treaty (essentially with yourself), or seeking recognition in the Constitution, setting targets for ‘normal’ levels of imprisonment, and all of the rest of the special deal crowd, will not solve the problem of how to create the conditions in which a 12-year-old Aboriginal girl can have all of the chances of the other Aborigine. The girl needs a way to escape the circumstances in which she was born. Give the girl the scholarship and remove her from those failed communities and give her a chance at life somewhat better than her parents. The parents likely had her when they were children, and never worked. To celebrate Australia is to celebrate a brilliant invention, an invention born from the struggles and intellectual endeavours of millions of people of all colours and creeds.