Australia Day

What a weird couple of days. Like most people I thought that the Sydney Big Day Out's threat to ban the Australian flag was a little stupid (not to mention likely to cause more harm than good), even though I was somewhat appreciative of their intentions and explanations of their actions (Yeah! Lets celebrate our country by listening to a bunch of popular bands from overseas! And Jet!). Even though I was expecting a significant reaction from the kids on the day of the Big Day Out, I still was surprised by just how strong it turned out to be, almost everyone there was either wearing a flag or a stick-on tattoo of the flag. Plus of course there were plenty of munters wearing those shirts with a picture of the Aussie flag saying “Support it or f*%k off”, which piss me off for a number of reasons. Firstly I'm aesthetically annoyed by little tough guy twats who're trying to appear intimidating but at the same time are too scared to wear a shirt with a real swear word on it. Secondly I wonder what they'd make of me. I live in Australia but I don't support their flag, would they tell me to fuck off or would they say “Oh no, we didn't mean you. You're OK, you're white”? I'm not sure which would be worse...

Anyway despite the unpleasant tone of some of the participants the day passed without incident. The next day (which was actually Australia Day) I largely avoided contact with any Aussies at all, spending most of the day in Bondi and the eastern suburbs with a big bunch of Kiwis. The one time I did venture into town I ran into a couple of drunk guys dressed in Australian flags. They came up to me and started chatting, and while they seemed friendly enough there was definitely a vibe about them that I disliked. Sure enough just then a black (i.e. Aboriginal) woman walked past and yelled out “Happy fucking Australia Day you fucking Aussie cunts” (or something along those lines) at them. At this point these guys started hurling abuse back at her. What disturbed me was the way that everyone else around was eager to join in the heckling. Now this kind of thing certainly doesn't happen everyday, at least not around where I've been living and hanging out. It's like for two days the whole country, normally so relaxed and easy going, undergoes some kind of nationalistic psychosis, and makes Waitangi Day look positively civilised. At least the two guys I was talking to were provoked by the incident into a discussion about whether it was 'fairdinkum' for the blacks to say 'fuck Australia', the final verdict of which was that they should be grateful that the poms showed up and conquered them, because otherwise the Japanese would have done so, and they'd be even worse off. Right...

Anyway I found this all somewhat frightening. Not in an 'oh my God it's just like Nazi Germany' sort of way but because it disturbs me how readily this nations youth can be persuaded to venerate an inanimate object. I seriously hate John Howard more every day. At least the actions of George Bush and his government are explicable, they may be motivated by greed, pride or some pathetic strain of religion but at least a connection between action and motivation is apparent. Not so in Australia, everything that comes out of Howard's mouth seems to be inspired by nothing but pure malice. He's like some of warlord from a b-grade eighties fantasy movie who simply wants what's worst for everyone. His recent comments about the flag seem to imply only one thing, Australia will probably want to go to war at some stage in the not too distant future, so we'd better make sure that we have plenty of young people ready to die for a flag. And the shaven headed 20 something boys of suburban Sydney are only too keen to oblige.