People used to refer to Paul Keating as the best Liberal Prime Minister we ever had. When Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister, people said that Mr Turnbull would have been a great Labor Prime Minister. Both proved far less able to deliver the ideological harmony they promised. Like Aesop’s fable of the man, the boy, and the donkey, ‘please all, and you will please none’ rings true of these short-term Prime Ministers. Enter Albo et al. on the cusp of Australia Day, and the end of Woke is nigh.
Dennis Shanahan’s recent article in The Australian outlines how the period from Christmas until Australia Day has been the ghost of Prime Ministers past and that Mr Albanese is now facing his toughest week yet. That may be so, and while the Bureau of Meteorology (don’t call them the BOM) may not be able to forecast a sunrise, I can confidently predict that Australia Day will be to the Albanese government what the Voice Referendum was to virtue-signalling city folk.
Following the accidental, last-man-standing party-room election of Scott Morrison as Prime Minister, the Liberal Party’s flirtation with mediocrity under Turnbull and before that, the regrettable Australia Day bridge too far of Tony Abbott (and his captain’s pick to knight the Duke of Edinburgh) were over. Governments of all stripes are not immune to the Australia Day doldrums, it seems.
And while some might still rail against Mr Morrison’s bizarre self-appointments as the Minister for Everything, AUKUS needs to be put up in neon signage over pictures of his head (like some monarch you see on car rear windows in the Middle East) as the major legacy of his reign.
But as an overreaction to Morrison, the Albanese government came to power with just under half a million first preference votes less than the Coalition.
As part of the Albanese government’s feel-good mandate, it has dithered while making policy, and instead has made decisions that use other people’s money to roll out a series of Woke tropes. But things are starting to turn.
When I sent a copy of my previous Speccie article on Albo upsetting everyone on energy to a retired professor mate of mine, he wrote back, ‘Why stop at just energy?’
Even traditional Labor supporters are turning against the Prime Minister.
Labor was once the supporter of the working man. I recall a mate who worshipped regularly at the local Salvation Army corps and had worked in Scotland and later emigrated to Australia in his youth. I asked Jimmy what it was like to be retired. Through the blood and fire and spittle, he said to me:
Micky, my whole life I did what I was told. My parents, my teachers, my bosses. Now I am retired, nobody can tell me what the f… to do! I do whatever the f… I like! I’ve waited my whole life for this!
Such salt-of-the-earth characters were Labor’s traditional voters. But such characters created their own social problems, especially for women. The working man who was emasculated at work was left to lord it over his family in ways that were not necessarily wholesome. Immigrants were also a source of angst because they took jobs from unionised labour at cheaper rates and lesser conditions. But that was part of the process of evolution leading to greater individual liberties.
The evolution of our society under liberal democracy has been to allow everyone to do whatever they like, within the law, to the extent that they do not harm others or themselves. The latter point, although not ideal from the perspective of providing help to those who need it but do not otherwise seek it, is to ensure that people are not locked away in asylums to suit the nefarious desires of those who disagree. But Woke politics has usurped the very liberties that even the labour movement helped to create. We have been threatened with ‘cancellation’ because of our ideas.
Yet the virtue-touting by contemporary Labor echoes that of its journalistic moral counterpart (along with the ABC), The Guardian, after discovering the masthead’s founders had links to transatlantic slavery. But what it does not do is admit that the Green-Left, like the rest of us, suffers from the human condition.
In the past, when one was ‘awakened’ (read ‘Woke’) to their sins, they wrote Amazing Grace or they wore a sandwich board and rang a bell to atone for their sins. Not Labor.
Instead, Labor have abandoned their traditional base and are now like an ex-smoker who complains at every opportunity about the people smoking nearby. It’s the ultimate guide of How to Lose Friends and Upset People. Labor’s traditional base has fallen into the target area of Albo’s Labor and their Great Woke Hope.
The good news is that Australians, like my old mates Jimmy and the professor, have had enough of being told what to do.
The majority of Australians are sick of it.
As we approach Australia Day, many Australians are re-embracing a day that was previously a comfortable anachronism. But try and take it away and see what happens. Woolworths may be in a solid market position, but ‘Go Woke, Go Broke’ is a thing.
In a tepid act of defiance among a sea of broken-hearted Voice profile pics, I’ve changed my Facebook profile pic to one of me cleaning my SLR while wearing Auscam. I have an Australian flag as my cover photo, and despite years of neglect, I’m channelling my old mate Jimmy and I am saying ‘nobody can tell me what the f… to do’. I admit it is rather trite, but people have been threatened with being ‘cancelled’ for equally mundane acts of defiance in recent times.
And I am putting up a flagpole in my front yard and I am going to floodlight my Australian flag so I can fly it 24/7 without breaching national flag protocol – even though my pets must eat cheaper food these days because I can’t really afford extras (yeah, nah, thanks for nothing, Albo, like everyone else my recent pay rise went straight to the bank and the power company).
But it is comforting to know that others are reacting similarly whereas just last year they were worried about the risk to their careers.
So, as we approach this Australia Day, may we consciously reinvigorate a tradition that was once a source of pride and joy, and that can still be so if we refuse to play the Green-Left’s boring Woke game of self-hatred. We are better than that, and there are many reasons for us to celebrate.
The Green-Left have offered us no compelling alternative to hating ourselves other than to replicate their Woke tropes as part of some Woke meme that leads to socialism. And socialism leads to nowhere.
We already live in the greatest nation in the world. Let us all rejoice and act like it.
Happy Australia Day!
