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Can you believe the Labor Party?

They’ve just announced their plan to combat Pauline Hanson.

And here’s what they’ve decided to do.

In order to halt the drift of voters to One Nation, Labor has decided to double down on the very policies that are driving people TO One Nation.

Honestly, you couldn’t make this up.

Labor to Enshrine Welcome to Country

Take the divisive Welcome to Country — as just one example.

At next month’s ALP National Conference in Adelaide, Labor isn’t planning to tone down the culture wars.

Quite the opposite.

They’re proposing to formally enshrine one of this country’s most divisive rituals into party policy.

Here’s the exact wording of what is being proposed:

“Labor recognises the importance of welcome to country and acknowledgement of country ceremonies, as opportunities to show respect to First Nations people.”

Are they for real?

Polling over the past few years has consistently shown that the majority of Australians are sick to death of these divisive race-based ceremonies in which we are ritually reminded that we are visitors in our own country.

A news.com.au poll of 50,000 people found that two-thirds wanted Welcome to Country ceremonies scrapped completely.

So naturally Labor’s response is: “Let’s have more.”

Albo the Culture Warrior

The Prime Minister was asked about this two days ago, and in attempting to defend Welcome to Country ceremonies, he demonstrated exactly why they should be binned.

Albanese was in Brisbane spruiking EVs — of course — when a journalist asked him about Pauline Hanson’s opposition to Welcome to Country.

Here’s how his response began:

“I’m not focused on culture wars. Never have been. But I’ll tell you what I don’t think it hurts anyone for people to be polite.”

Well, hold on a second.

Albanese isn’t focused on culture wars? Never has been?

That’s like Dracula insisting he’s not really into necks.

Chalk it up as another Albo lie!

But notice what happened next.

He said he doesn’t do culture wars… before immediately making support for Welcome to Country a moral test of whether or not you’re a polite Australian.

And if you object to being ceremonially welcomed into the country where you already live, apparently you’re not expressing a political opinion. You’re just rude.

Welcome to Country Means It’s Not Our Country

Then came the analogy that should have had every Labor strategist reaching for the emergency stop button.

Have a listen to this:

“If I come into your home, I knock on the door, and I’ll say: ‘Is it okay if I come in?’ And you’ll go… ‘Yeah, welcome.’”

Exactly.

Thank you, Prime Minister.

You’ve just explained the objection to Welcome to Country better than Pauline Hanson ever could.

The PM says it’s polite, when you go to someone else’s house, that you knock and ask permission to enter.

The PM’s analogy only works if Australia is somebody else’s house. Then the rest of us are visitors. That’s the premise. And that’s the problem.

The Prime Minister doesn’t seem to realise that the metaphor he’s using is precisely why millions of Australians reject these ceremonies.

He thinks he’s rebutting the criticism. He’s illustrating it!

He just explained perfectly why Welcome to Country is both highly inappropriate AND highly offensive.

Australia doesn’t belong to a small group of people by virtue of their ancestry, as opposed to the rest of us who were also born here but with a slightly different skin colour.

I don’t need to “knock” on the door of my local Indigenous elder and ask permission to go about my business… in my country.

How can the PM not see how incredibly divisive that is?

Well, let me answer my own question.

The problem with being wedded to ideology as Albo is, is that it blinds you to seeing anything else, like reality!

But let me give the Prime Minister a little more rope:

“I don’t think it hurts anyone and that’s all it is. It’s an act of politeness. It’s someone saying: ‘Is it okay if I come onto your country and respect the land and waters that you have looked after?’ And people will welcome them.”

What?

So the Prime Minister says that a Welcome to Country ceremony is you and me seeking permission to go about our business in our own country.

I’m not verballing him. Listen again:

“It’s someone saying: ‘Is it okay if I come onto your country and respect the land and waters that you have looked after?’”

Somewhere in Queensland, Pauline Hanson just sent Labor a thank-you card. Her vote just went up another 10 percent!

Damage of Welcome to Country

Albanese said he doesn’t see how that hurts anyone.

Well, let me make it plain.

It hurts Indigenous Australians by fostering within them a sense of entitlement and superiority that isn’t due. It’s wrong of the government to do that.

It hurts non-Indigenous Australians by perpetuating a sense of guilt they don’t deserve and of visitor status in the only country they’ve ever known.

It hurts the whole country by turning citizenship — which ought to unite Australians regardless of ancestry — into an endless conversation about bloodlines.

And yet the Prime Minister stood there yesterday and said:

“I don’t think it hurts anyone.”

If he doesn’t think it hurts anyone, then he’s not thinking.

I said I’d give the PM some more rope. So here he is… fully extended:

“Just cultural respect. Just like when I arrived at the factory here today. I said thank you to the people for welcoming me.”

Prime Minister, you said thank you to the people for welcoming you at their factory because it is THEIR factory.

They built it. They run it. They own it.

And what if the owners of the factory didn’t welcome you? You’d be a trespasser.

Now, if that’s the Prime Minister’s comparison — and it was — then once again, he’s conceded the central point.

The argument against Welcome to Country isn’t that Australians have forgotten how to be polite.

It’s that governments keep insisting the country belongs more to some Australians than it does to other Australians.

I wonder if it ever occurs to Anthony Albanese — you know, in those quiet moments when he’s not thinking about Kylie Minogue — that maybe the rise of One Nation isn’t due to racism; maybe it’s a reaction to racism.

The racism now being proposed as official Labor policy.

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Republished with thanks to The James Macpherson Report. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.