Neoc**ts
authoritarian right, rather than the traditionally conservative libertarian right. They tend to be very pro-war and adopt the mentality of "We're better than you and we know it." Believe in creating boogeymen to try and make you think only they can keep you safe while they restrict your freedoms to "protect you". This is their signature issue, to help keep them in power
In response to Abbott's claim that the arrival of the first fleet was Australia's most defining moment
Yesterday, Andrew Bolt addressed the issue on his show, claiming his rightful place on the “most offensive” throne, with guests Nikki Savva, a former Liberal party staffer, and Health Services Union manager Kimberley Kitching.
Bolt played an excerpt of Abbott’s speech and followed it up with this pearl of wisdom: “I think the fact he repeated it, suggested he really wanted people to hear it and react to it”.
Kitching timidly replied: “Yes but I think it’s better when a Prime Minister is inclusive, and I’m not sure that the first fleet arriving in boats full of convicts, really defines Australia today.”
Bolt scoffed at her.
“And what language are you speaking Kimberley?” he asked.
“English”
“Wow…” Bolt replied. “How could you… but this is the point. The ABC was full of predictable outrage yesterday from Aboriginal leaders, including Abbott’s own advisor Warren Mundine who seems to be operating as a one-man opposition within the government… the fact is you should be able to say the truth. It was the most defining moment in our history.”
Savva responded with her own version of Bolt’s argument:
“It was a statement of the bleeding obvious… and it might not be a happy statement of the bleeding obvious for Indigenous people, but the fact is that is what happened. That is why Australia is what it is today – now Indigenous people may wish it wasn’t so… but it is so.
“We are here, we are speaking English, we have a judicial system gained from the British, we have a parliamentary system gained from the British.”
Bolt interjected: “The rule of law”.
And then Bolt dropped the clanger: “And a lot of these are actually good. I found it amazing. Aboriginal leaders responding in English to this statement of the bleeding obvious… it sort of just plays into Abbott’s hands.”
Bolt is gleefully boasting about the political capital Abbott could have gained from the pain of Aboriginal people not being able to speak their traditional languages.
It really is a ‘statement of the bleeding obvious’: The reason Aboriginal people respond in English is because languages were ripped from their tongues by successive governments that aimed to either wipe away or assimilate Aboriginal cultures into mainstream Australia.
The history of the settlement of Australia described by Bolt and Savva is not “true” or “fact” – it is a whitewashed history that excludes the traumatic experiences of Aboriginal people and boasts about the barriers that push against them when they try to exercise their rights to culture, language and spirituality.
Australia is one of the world’s top hot spots for disappearing languages, which should be a shock to all citizens because languages are the portal to revitalising and reinvigorating cultural practices.
Languages are libraries of cultural knowledge. To Aboriginal people, they are as valuable as the commodities the big miners want to rip from our land.
For Bolt to undermine this, and instead react in amusement to the continual suppression of Indigenous languages and cultural practices, is one of the most offensive things I’ve heard from him. And I’ve heard him utter some pretty offensive things.
This lie that all Australians have benefited from systems gained from the British is also one that doesn’t weigh up with the evidence.
How then would you explain the fact the nation’s jails are brimming with Aboriginal men, women and children, on the losing end of a white justice system? Or ‘the rule of law’ as Bolt puts it.
This is not a happy statement of “the bleeding obvious” for Bolt or Savva. It is a stupid, and inaccurate statement that does nothing to help raise Aboriginal equality.
