Changing Australia Day just the latest Left obsession
Peta Credlin
January 27, 2018 8:00pm
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ENOUGH.
We’ve had it with the sneering campaigns, the moral superiority, the rewritten history and the attempts to make us ashamed for who we are and our place in the world.
Australia was settled as a British penal colony, on lands inhabited by indigenous peoples, and is now one of the most diverse multicultural nations on earth. It is a fact — get over it.
As Australians, we are fair, just and free. While we are not responsible for the actions of those who came before us, any more than our grandchildren are responsible for us, in recent decades we have rightly acknowledged the full history of Australia’s settlement — the good, and the bad.
But I will be damned if the latest campaign from the Left will make me feel ashamed of our country, our people, our flag or our national day.
This is the best country on Earth; if you don’t think so, buy yourself a plane ticket and head overseas.
It is not perfect, no place or person is, but it is about as good as it gets and we need to remember that when the professional haters and campaigners start up on their latest moral crusade. As someone who has spent years working on political campaigns, we need to be very clear that this is what’s underway.
Following the success of marriage equality, the Left are emboldened and casting around
for an issue; changing the date of Australia Day is their latest obsession.
An estimated crowd of 30,000 marched in Melbourne for the Invasion Day rally on January 26. (Pic: Peter Parks/AAP)
Already there’s the obligatory hashtag to mobilise social media #changethedate, and overpaid celebrities to emote their support via Twitter. Next, they’ll push corporate Australia to campaign for change, and threaten brand boycotts if they don’t. There’ll be further rallies, monies raised and ads on TV.
Kids will cop it in the schoolroom via unionised teachers brainwashing them to go home and tell their parents that if the date doesn’t change, they implicitly sanction the massacre of Aborigines in the past.
Weak politicians will crab walk away from their support of our national day, with those that stick to their guns bullied by the ABC, and mocked on shows such as The Project, for being out of touch or, god forbid, conservative or traditional.
Destiny Lyons (11), Aliza Lyons (4), Alieu Lyons, and Jeziah Lyons (7) enjoyed the Australia Day festivities in Sydney’s Liverpool. (Pic: Joel Carrett/AAP)
Away from the professional activist class living in our inner cities, none of this campaign will change the life of the Aboriginal woman routinely beaten by her partner, or the primary school child gang raped by older kids, or the youth that can’t get a job, or the dad that drinks his welfare before the family gets fed. I’ve been in many of these communities, I’ve read the reports and heard from the victims first-hand. A few brave indigenous leaders such as Bess and Jacinta Price speak out, and Warren Mundine too, but others stay silent as they would rather bully whitefellas from the pulpit of the ABC and social media than stand up for the voiceless blackfella in the backblocks. This is the reality of so many non-urban indigenous lives and if the righteous Left were fair dinkum about so-called Aboriginal atonement, the crimes of today and not the past would be what gets the celebrity attention, the hashtag action, and national campaign.
While there was injustice based on ethnicity in Australia’s past, almost every one of us today acknowledges this fact. That we have elected our highest number of indigenous MPs in history, not via designated seats or a special quota, demonstrates we are a country
that judges people on their ability, not skin colour.
Australians with an eye to the future, as much as the past, celebrated Australia Day on Friday with all of its joys, shared humanity, rough edges and complexity. The empty virtue-signalling of others must never diminish the day we all stop and give thanks for winning the greatest lottery in life: The right to grow up in this country and call ourselves an Australian.
