National Pride

This article has been written by Bill Condie, for The Guardian, a pommy newspaper. I copied/pasted it here for those of you too lazy to click a link.

Why I've Fallen Out Of Love With Australia
September 5th, 2004
by Bill Condie

It could have been all so different, and for a time it was. Like young Australians for generations, I left home as soon as I could - in my case, 1983 - to see what the world had to offer. While it was a great place to grow up, as adulthood beckoned, everything big seemed to be happening elsewhere.

I went to London to work as a journalist, and thought little about home until I took a holiday back there in the late Eighties.

I was unprepared for what I found. Australia had grown from an insular backwater into a vibrant, sophisticated, cosmopolitan society.

It had achieved remarkable success in assimilating people from all round the world, who left old animosities behind to embrace a distinctly Australian openness.

Whereas a few years earlier they would envy you a London life, now they pitied you. 'Why the hell would you want to be there when you could be here?' they asked.

Looking round the great cities of Sydney and Melbourne, they had a point. Everything was cleaner, fresher and more vibrant down under than in Europe.

The beach was there, of course, but more sophisticated pleasures had been added. The arts were flourishing. Australians were coming to terms with their sometimes unattractive past. There was general agreement that there must be reconciliation with the long-suffering Aborigines. There was growing enthusiasm for an amicable break with the monarchy and a belief, even among older Australians, that a republic was a positive step.

In the early Nineties, I moved to Bangkok. There I discovered another dimension to the new Australia. Paul Keating's high-profile drive to engage with Asia was attracting attention - and not just in the business community. High-profile projects such as the Australian-funded bridge across the Mekong were well-received. Taxi drivers would smile and say with some surprise, 'Australia number one. Australia likes Asia.' American journalist friends would eschew US embassy briefings for Australian - not just more informative but a lot more fun.

It was remarkable. I began to feel it was time to return to take part belatedly in this remarkable renaissance. My timing could not have been worse.

I could not wrap up affairs in Bangkok until after the 1996 election punished Keating for his arrogance and swept Howard to power in a rancorous campaign which saw race become an election issue for the first time since the White Australia Policy began to be dismantled in 1958.

It was the election that brought One Nation Party leader Pauline Hanson to parliament on a ticket of anti-immigration, anti-Aboriginal aid and anti-globalisation.

My first inkling that something was going wrong came in Bangkok at a meeting of the Australian business community addressed by the new Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, on a stopover to London - his first official trip overseas.

In front of the embarrassed Australians - many his own party's supporters - and baffled Thais, Downer claimed that Australia under Keating had concentrated too much effort and rhetoric on Asia. This had distracted us from our older friends in Britain and there would be a rebalancing of priorities.

Back in Australia, Hanson, who said she represented the 'white community' and everyone, 'apart from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders', had just made her maiden speech attacking her favourite targets. Howard refused to condemn her, instead turning his venom on 'political correctness' and adding: 'I thought some of the things she said were an accurate reflection of what people feel.'

Howard's support rose overnight and the atmosphere of Australia changed almost as quickly. An emboldened Howard moved on with his mean-spirited agenda, refusing to officially apologise to Aborigines for the generation of children taken from them by the state. The republican cause was canned.

Howard's brutal policy on asylum seekers, pursued with indecent relish by Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock, kept Australians fearful of an invasion - although the numbers, some 3,000, were laughably small. Hundreds of children were imprisoned, along with their families, in desert detention centres.

Australians, who a few years before had apparently relished ethnic differences, became more openly racist. Polls showed racial intolerance, especially against Muslims, growing. A cardiac surgeon, during Australia's 'friendly' Olympics, told me in a Sydney bar that if it was up to him he'd 'drop the big one and turn the Middle East into a glass car park - that'd stop the bastards coming'.

For me, the final straw was the so-called 'children overboard' affair. On the eve of the last national poll in October 2001, a group of 200 desperate asylum-seekers, mainly Iraqis, jumped with their children from a sinking boat off the Australian coast.

Within hours, Howard and Ruddock were relaying a very different version of events. There was no mention of sinking ships. Australians were told the 'illegal immigrants' had thrown their children in the sea to force a nearby frigate to pick them up.

Now, back in Bangkok, there are no briefings for US journalists at the Australian embassy, and taxi drivers tell me: 'Australia. Same, same America.'

This is the sad kind of Australia we live in now. Howard expects all kids to salute the Australian flag, sing the national anthem ("or your school won't get additional funding!"), and be proud of our country.

Why should we be?