It's Australia Day!
On January 26th 1788, the first European settlers arrived to found the penal colony in Sydney Cove.
From very poor beginnings we have grown up to be a great nation- a place of wealth and freedom probably unmatched in the world.
What a wonderful culture we have also- a people who can do almost anything without having to boast about how great we are.
There are two blights on our landscape:
1. The institutionalised racism in our culture that is not that common in our individual values. We are scared of the handful of refugees who come in boats and make them suffer disproportionately to the threat they pose. Some analysts are talking about our flag becoming a symbol of racism because it has been claimed by the extreme right as their symbol.
2. The ongoing plight of aboriginal people who are in the main welfare dependent, live much shorter lives and suffer more violence, more drug and alcohol issues than most of us. We've tried a lot of things, but nothing with total commitment. I think that we need to bypass the advocacy/ victim industry and find real solutions, possibly tailor made and self determined by each community. I think that the lip service paid at every government funded event of respecting the "original owners" needs to give way to a real commitment to healing the devastation that is the situation in most aboriginal communities.
Anyway, have a good one Australia!
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