The barbaric slaughter of many hundreds of Israelis by Palestinian terrorists is a horrifying reminder of the power of hatred between communities. Is that what we would want for Australia?
Even if we could be sure it would never come to that, the referendum to introduce the concept of racial division into this country’s understanding of who we are would, if passed, have driven a further wedge between Australians, white or Aboriginal. It would have taken this nation backwards to the era of apartheid – separate development it was called – in South Africa, something that the Left, until it got its own way with the overthrow of white rule, never ceased to inveigh against. Yet many if not most leftists will have voted ‘Yes’ to a constitutional endorsement of a kind of separate development here. The failure of the referendum, unfortunately, will not have made them see the error of their ways.
They will go on, wishing and hoping this country further down the road towards bad feeling between Australians of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal descent. Professor Marcia Langton, the comfortably university-tenured activist, whose well-paid existence is proof that Aborigines can advance as well as any other Australians, hinted that this would not be the end if her side lost. We can probably thank Professor Langton most for the defeat of the ‘Yes’ campaign: she committed the same blunder as Hillary Clinton and her crack about ‘deplorables’ and insulted ‘No’ voters in advance, deriding them as ‘stupid’ and ‘racist’. (It was diverting to note the speed with which the ‘Yes’ campaign wheeled Langton off stage after her voter-repelling remarks. One minute she was never off the screen, the next she’d vanished.)
If there is ever violence in the future, it will be the white-dominated treaty and ‘reparations’ demanding troublemakers who will have caused it. They deliberately imported the very different racial politics of the United States and grafted them onto Australia’s relationship with its Aboriginal citizens. The very term ‘first nations’, now blessed by prime ministerial usage, is an import. They appropriated the violent political techniques of Saul Alinsky and Black Lives Matter and cast our local Aborigines in the role of aggrieved African-Americans.
There has never been a ‘race problem’ in Australia, and even though this nation is a compound of ethnicities, there was never going to be one without activist meddling. Most non-Anglo migrants were contentedly absorbed into the community, while some 80 per cent of the Aboriginal population was integrated with their fellow citizens and led exactly the same lives in cities and suburbs as they do. Even the 20 per cent who live in conditions of deprivation and too often of internecine violence in the ‘townships’ and the ‘outback’, are part-integrated, with cars and mobile phones and all the other accoutrements of contemporary life. The sad irony is, that after the millions of dollars of public money vainly spent with the intention of improving their lot, these would have been the people least helped by the ‘Voice’, which was never going to be anything more useful than a talking shop for leftist power-seekers jostling for the upper hand among each other.
One encouraging result of the referendum is the demonstration it has given that Australia is not yet totally in thrall to the forces of wokery. Though few have commented on it, this was a contest between the culture of militant ‘progressive’ leftism, with its hitherto virtually unchallenged imposition on the community of its deranged obsessions with inter alia race and ‘colonialism’, and the conventional wisdom, anchored in experience and reason, that has shaped our civilisation. Had the tidal wave of Woke propaganda in the schools and the media finally swamped common sense? The referendum result would suggest not yet, though the propaganda will continue, and no doubt become more shrill, with invocations of the United Nations and ‘international opinion’ and even more strident condemnations of our ‘systemic racism’ and ‘stupidity’ from Professor Langton and her allies (one of whom, Ray Martin, a relic of television sensationalism, compounded Langton’s foolishness by describing ‘No’ voters as ‘dinosaurs’). The ABC will be gratifyingly apoplectic.
The Left has further poisoned the racial wells with its myth that this country is ‘occupied’ – just like they say the Palestinian part of Israel is. If true, would this not put the activists themselves in the position of the Israelis? Yet the left execrates Israel and demands that it withdraw from its ‘occupation’. It’s a case of ‘do as I say, not as I do’ because no white leftist deploring the occupation of ‘never ceded’ Aboriginal territory shows the faintest inclination to withdraw from it and hand over house and land to the ‘traditional owners’. Mantras about ‘acknowledgment’ and calling our cities by alleged Aboriginal names are as far as the average leftist goes towards ending the ‘occupation’.
The ‘Yes’ side deserved to lose this referendum, not only for its attempt to foist a divisive polity on Australia, but for the dirty tactics with which it did so, the jiggery-pokery over crosses and ticks, the deceitful efforts to hide the full implications of ‘Yes’, the attempt to confuse voters by making ‘Yes’ posters the same colour as official electoral notice boards, the cynical appeals to emotion, and above all the gross misuse of taxpayers’ money in funding only one side of the debate.
As a footnote, one cannot but observe with sadness the further potential for racial conflict in this country shown by the jubilation at the massacre of Israelis from, among others, certain Islamics, to whose co-religionists the Prime Minister went crawling for support for his now mercifully rejected scheme to divide the nation.
