Fearless? Brave? Heroic? Fighting for what’s good and true?

When white supremacist group The Southern Cross Soldiers decided to hold a rally on Australia Day, they thought the beach would be their oyster, and the media their bitch. What patriotic, beach loving Aussie could ignore their call for immigrants to fuck off?

Sadly, it was not to be.

You could tell it would be an exercise in idiocy from the moment the first little troopers arrived under The Clocks and began casting anxious eyes over the Australia Day parade rolling down Swanston St.

Chinese marchers with their dragons, Turkish dancers, new arrivals from Africa – the sort of people your typical Southern Cross Soldier wants to send back where they came from.

But outnumbered as they were, there wasn’t a peep out of these heroes, whose ranks swelled gradually to about 30.

Thirty? Sounds like a right proper army to me.

And at Mordialloc’s multicultural melting pot, well you just had to laugh. They congregated for a while at the foot of the pier like virgins at an orgy, glancing anxiously down the beach and at all those non-Anglo faces, who paid them no heed whatsoever.

When a couple of brawny Pacific Islanders ambled past, their silence was deafening.

[...]

When a Herald Sun photographer tried to snap their pictures, that was the moment to demonstrate courage. Fifteen on one, those are the sort of odds cowards like best.

There was a bit of pushing and shoving and lens-blocking, and one big kid struck a boxing pose and offered to punch some heads.

He didn’t and they drifted away on a cloud of obscenity to have another go at remembering the words to Advance Australia Fair.

It’s good to know John Ray has these guys on his side, because when the New Soviets come they will not be spared.

A look through the list of Australians of the Year for the previous ten years reveals five doctors/scientists, four sportspeople, and one musician. If there’s any consistent theme to the list of recipients it’s that captaining the Australian test cricket team is the surest way to win the gong. While latte-sipping lefties write furious entries in their Moleskine journals between Arabic language classes about how Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh in no way represent Australia just for swinging a lump of wood around, there are an awful lot of Australians who do think that these men are the epitome of Australian-ness. The same latte sipper may have been ecstatic when Tim Flannery was triumphant a couple of years ago, while the cricket-loving Aussies may never have heard of him, let alone have had any idea what AGW stands for.

There is a lot of risk involved in trying to define exactly what is “Australian”. Just look at how badly Baz Luhrmann summed it up in his arrogantly titled film, with no insights into Australian-ness beyond tired and inaccurate cliches and marketing slogans. And Australians, by-and-large, didn’t appreciate Luhrmann’s attempt either, with his effort attracting derision from commentators across the country’s social and political spectrum.

But despite the risk in attempting to pin down such a nebulous concept as Australian-ness, we do it all of the time. A couple of weeks ago the federal Opposition fingered Vegemite as the very heart of what it meant to be Australian and attacked the government for proposing to (even though they weren’t really) tax the condiment for its high salt content.

If Our Don Bradman were alive today he’d surely be uncomfortable about the way that he’s become a political and social cricket ball, bowled and cover-driven back-and-forth for the purposes of political gain and ham-fisted attempts at heritage building. Our Don has become so symbolic of Australian-ness that nobody dare suggest he shouldn’t be a part of the process of gaining Australian citizenship, and politicians fall over themselves to endorse Bradman more emphatically than the others for fear of being branded unAustralian.

And there it is: “unAustralian”. Perhaps it is through labelling stuff as not Australian that we actually define what is Australian. That derisory term has become one of the main weapons in Australians’ arsenals, deployed as a last resort when all other insults have failed. It’s unAustralian to not bet on the Melbourne Cup. It’s unAustralian to have a go at somebody for taking a sickie from work. It’s unAustralian to drink light beer. Ex-Prime Minister John Howard used to love accusing people of being unAustralian if their opinions didn’t fit with his own set of values and world view, and politicians of all hues continue to do the same.

We’re only 200-odd years old — a toddler in the context of other nations — and Australia is still suffering from somewhat of an identity crisis. We’re still trying to sort out our stories, our icons, and our heroes, and we’re far from achieving any sort of consensus view. This is partly because of our demographics and the lack of homogeneity across the population. Because all non-Indigenous Australians have a connection to another country if you go back only a handful of generations, and with a large proportion of first- and second-generation immigrants still feeling a connection to both their country of residence and their country of origin, there is no single-strand of familial history or conformity of feeling about Australia’s role in one’s life. Add to the mix our post-settlement British heritage and our pre-settlement Indigenous heritage, and we’re facing a massive diversity of views within our 21 million-strong citizenry.

Despite this, there are certain things that are more-or-less accepted (with some dissent, of course) as defining Australian-ness. We’ve got the story of Gallipoli and the argument it weaves about Australian character. We’ve got sport and the central role it plays (through participation and spectating) in the lives of an awful lot of Australians. We’ve even got the flag, which is very quickly becoming a potent and important symbol of Australian identity for many Australians. Patriotism (how American does that word sound?) is spreading and strengthening, and even becoming rather aggressive. Bumper stickers bearing flags, daring readers to “love it or leave it” are everywhere, and the tabloids love playing up stories about evil Australia-hating bureaucrats who order true Aussies to remove flags from poles that don’t meet planning regulations.

But for all the things that unite us, there will always be things that divide us. In an extreme example, the Cronulla rioters and their supports reckon that “Lebs” on the beaches that their “grandfathers fought for” is unAustralian, along with Muslims and foreigners in general. Conversely, most Australians think that the Cronulla rioters and their bigoted views are unAustralian. And herein lies the crux of the issue: one person’s Australian is another person’s unAustralian. (It goes without saying, however, that the filthy views espoused by the Cronulla rioters and their ilk could never be considered Australian by any thinking person with a scrap of humanity.)

From the usually controversial selection of Australian of the Year, to the search for national symbols and themes, it’s tempting to conclude that Australia is struggling to find and identify itself. But could it be that the diversity in views about Australian-ness is the very thing that makes us Australian? Is it simply impossible to represent “Australian-ness” with one person, one set of icons, or one set of ideas? Should this ongoing tussle over the representation of Australia actually be celebrated as a sign that our country is diverse, free-thinking, and independent? That Australia can mean 21 million different things to 21 million different people, and that this, in itself, is a beautiful thing?

So as we settle back into work, struggle with our Australia Day hangovers, and deal with the fact that the summer silly season is officially over, perhaps we should have a think about the 2009 Australian of the Year and try to see his achievements as only one small part of what makes this country the greatest in the world. And even if we can’t get excited about Mick Dodson and struggle to see in him our own idea of Australian-ness, maybe we should see him as a symbol of our diversity and celebrate that instead.

“We are a free country and it is natural and right from time to time, that there will be conversations about such important symbols for our nation,” he said.

Kevin Rudd on moving Australia Day from January 26th, part two:

“To our indigenous leaders, and those who call for a change to our national day, let me say a simple, respectful, but straightforward no.”

Well that was a pretty short fricken conversation.

…here is a partial list of the things the Left hate about Australia:

Australia Day, Anzac Day, people who live in the suburbs, people who live in the country, farmers, fishermen, dams, Quadrant, Australian history, the flag, the constitution, Andrew Bolt’s readers, The Australian, Liberal voters, National Party voters, Family First voters, One Nation supporters, the RSL, McDonald’s, McMansions, plasma TVs, Australian Idol, big business, small business, monolingualists, Christians, our last prime minister, liberal democracy, capitalism, lamingtons, Australians, the national coat of arms, the Samuel Griffith Society, soldiers, conservatives, musicals not about Australian Left politicians, commercial television, non-indigenous trees, dog owners, cats, non-Left talk back radio hosts, timber workers, plastic bags, Howard’s battlers, climate change sceptics, white people, commercial radio, America (pre-Obama), sovereignty (ours), realistic paintings (especially by Albert Namatjira), the Big Banana and other Big Things, cultural dissidents, men, sprinklers, green lawns, cars (other peoples), wood fires, rednecks, Sir John Kerr.

To be continued …

Go on then. Continue the list in comments. And while were making stereotypical and reductionist list, let’s put together a list of things that Teh Right hate about Australia.

In this episode The Editor, John Surname, Prophet and Craig discuss the following:

* Heath Ledger
* Scientology
* Australia Day
* Telstra
* Don Bradman
* Big Day Out
* Helen Razer
* Jim Schembri
* Chris Johnston

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