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January 30, 2012
The cartoon below is Bil Leak's interpretation of Aboriginal protests on Australia Day in Canberra in News Ltd's The Australian. It is part of an article by Henry Ergas entitled Enforcing one rule of law for all.
Ergas argues that if conduct violates the law, we should expect those responsible to be held to account. The law ought to apply to the protesters at the Aboriginal tent embassy exactly as as it applies to everyone else, including the Cronulla rioters.
Leak's cartoon depicts The Left as populist, confused, ugly and angry. They--the ugly Australian--- look very much like the right wing anti-carbon legislation rioters and the truckies circling parliament house.
What is obscured by the cartoon is what the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra was about --a protest about the dispossession of indigenous people from their traditional land in settler Australia, the use of English law to legitimate that violence and the ongoing racism by white Australians towards aboriginal Australians.
For Leak it is the Left that is the problem, not the dead hand of White Australia. For Indigenous Australians the January 26 –understood as Invasion Day or Survival Day – is viewed as a day of mourning for the land that was taken and the ensuing two centuries of social alienation, racism, discrimination and oppression.
The Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the lawn opposite (Old) Parliament House is a powerful symbol. Strangers in their own country, the aboriginal people established diplomatic representation to negotiate with the federal government about their land rights.
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C'mon Bill. One of those ladies would of yelled SHOES! WE WANT SHOES!