|
December 12, 2005
I appreciate that the image below is off key with this event in Cronulla Sydney on Sunday.
Bill Leak
But it was a carnivial atmosphere of reclaiming the beach in the morning before the violence set in during the afternoon and evening and affiriming being an Aussie. There was John Williamson music blaring from car stereos, a sea of Australian flags, Eureka Stockade flags and boxing kangaroos, and a celebration of being a true blue Aussies.
Yet Cronulla transformed into possibly Australia's biggest racist protest since vigilante miners killed two Chinese at Lambing Flat in 1860.
When a day of nationalism becomes a racist free-for-all whilst singing Waltzing Matilda raises questions about Australian nationalism and culture in a globlised world that is caught up in a war on terror.
40 years ago Australia faced the reality that 'Britishness' could not act as a focus for Australian policies and priorities. That left a void in the Australian self-image or identity. Multiculturalism filled the void left by the decay of a once intense white Britishness.
So what becomes of the British heritage in the Australian national experience? If we are a nation of immigrants, so this orthodoxy runs, why give the British heritage pride of place? What is to be done about the nation’s British-centred past as the core national myth that once gave meaning to the Australian people?
The war on terror has punched the wind out of multiculturalism. What returns to fill the void? Cronulla indicated that it is Britishness recoded as Australian nationality. It claims that this tradition has a form of words which explains our nation's history, defines its values, and sets out its aspirations for the generations to come.
|
The way you put it sounds like a white-anglo-Aussie struggle to find self identity amid an "unsettling sea" of multiculturalism. I suppose you are right. Without any other well-defined iconography or culture to fall back on, the yobbos feel they must hijack the icons of Australia that existed before large-scale immigration.