A recent Spectator Australia article by Victorian Liberal MP Beverley McArthur, in which she criticised Geelong Council’s decision to cancel Australia Day, brought the wrath of the usual suspects – the Leftist media including the Guardian – but also surprisingly, and sadly, a rebuke from her Party Leader, John Pesutto.

McArthur had only rightly pointed out that:

‘Cancelling Australia Day is code for saying we are not a good nation. We are not worth celebrating’ and, ‘Geelong councilors will not allow one day to reflect upon the wonderful things that have been enabled via colonisation by a democratic nation… In cancelling Australia Day, it has given in to the oppression of identity politics, of victimhood. In so doing, it fails to applaud the successes of the Aboriginal people in this modern nation.’

McArthur is said to have commented further that:

‘Should we also say sorry for hospitals, roads, mobile phones, ready food at supermarkets, homes, running water, electricity for light and warmth, indigenous-only medical centres, aged care, and court processes?’

Pesutto is reported to have distanced himself from McArthur’s comments by saying:

‘I do not accept that as a statement, I think it is hurtful to Indigenous Victorians and Indigenous Australians. I think it’s incumbent on everyone to engage in debates about Indigenous Australians and the great contribution our First Nations people have made it [sic] our country in a very respectful way. There are ways to conduct this debate without causing hurt or offence.’

Less surprisingly, Marcus Stewart, a Victorian Nira illim bulluk Aboriginal man, also attacked McArthur, describing her as:

‘…another unknown politician saying something offensive at our expense as they try to make a name for themselves. Should Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people be saying thanks for the invasion of our lands and massacre of our people?’

The irony of Stewart’s and Pesutto’s own ‘hurtful’ and somewhat ignorant comments is not lost on many of us educated Speccie readers.

Stewart, in his public role as co-chair of Victoria’s First Peoples’ Assembly, is well within his rights to critique McArthur’s policies and claims, but he discredits his case by disrespectfully attacking her personally.

He also criticised McArthur by asking, ‘Should Torres Strait Islander people be saying thanks for the invasion of [their] lands…?’

Well, they should say thanks, because that is what they do every July 1. This is the date on which Torres Strait Islanders celebrate the Coming of the Light, a commemoration of the day in 1871 when the London Missionary Society introduced Christianity into the islands. Christian values are some of McArthur’s ‘wonderful things that have been enabled via colonisation’, the celebration of which her critics now perversely label as ‘hurtful’.

And how do we know that the Coming of the Light is as important and as celebratory to Indigenous people in the Torres Strait as Australia Day is to Australians generally? Because the Victorian government’s website Deadly Story tells us so.

This website was legislated under the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005 to, ‘satisfy the requirement that all Aboriginal children in out-of-home care are to be provided with a cultural plan’.

Pesutto should be aware of this legislation, shouldn’t he? If even the Victorian government acknowledges an Indigenous Torres Strait Islander celebration of the coming of colonisation, why can’t McArthur’s critics acknowledge and support defenders of Australia Day?

Similarly, other prominent Liberal Indigenous Australians have publicly made claims similar to McArthur’s without censure by the Liberal Party or Aboriginal activists.

Warren Mundine has offered a nuanced perspective on the topic. He recognises that there were negative impacts on Indigenous communities due to colonisation, but that our discourse ‘shouldn’t be just negative stuff all the time’ because Australia is ‘one of the most successful countries when it comes to improving the lives of Indigenous people’. (Source)

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, another influential Liberal-aligned Indigenous voice, has also contributed to the conversation without attracting the ire of the party. Price ‘does not see herself as a victim to white people or the idea of colonisation’ but rather, ‘She “speaks the truth” when it comes to Indigenous people helping themselves with their own problems, instead of pointing the finger and laying blame elsewhere.’ (Source)

The real irony in this debate however, is how the anti-colonial ideology of activists is very much a product of the very colonialism they condemn. To paraphrase British historian Tom Holland from his recent book, Dominion, How the Christian Revolution Remade the World:

‘Any condemnation of [the British Christian colonisation of Australia] as patriarchal and repressive derives from a framework of values that is itself utterly Christian. The measure of a man’s compassion for the lowly and the suffering [i.e. Indigenous Australians] comes to be the measure of the loftiness of his own soul.’

Aboriginal activists that follow this path are only establishing their moral virtue, or ‘loftiness of their soul’, by re-inventing what Holland observes is:

‘…the discovery made by Christ’s earliest followers that to be a victim might be a source of power that could bring out millions onto the streets [think BLM, or Sydney’s Walk for Reconciliation]. 

‘Wealth and rank, in [modern Australia] are not the only indices of status. So too are their opposites. Against the [power of the colonial Christian patriarchy, activists such as Stewart] seek to invoke the authority of those who lay at the bottom of the pile. The last were to be first, and the first were to be last.’ 

This illustrates the political problem for politicians such as Pesutto in the face of the activist’s success for their Indigenous self-determination agenda. Pesutto himself is a decent man, whose own beliefs and culture are based on solid Christian values, but he and his ancestors hail from a society where, as Holland tells us:

‘It was the fate of rulers to be brought down from their thrones, and the humble to be lifted up, a reflection that had always prompted anxious Christians [such as Pesutto?] to check their privilege. It had inspired Paulinus to give away his wealth, and Francis to strip himself naked before the Bishop of Assisi, and Elizabeth of Hungary to toil in a hospital as a scullery maid.’

Or dare we say it, the Leader of the Victorian Liberal Party to humble himself, and his once great party, by failing to have the courage to stand-up and defend Australia Day and the positive achievements of colonisation.

The hitherto success of the Australian Project is facing an existential threat from the Left and their ‘Woke’ activism. This threat can only be checked if the courage to ‘speak the truth’ by voices such as Beverly McArthur and Moira Deeming can be allowed within a Liberal ‘broad church’, as the party once was.

Let’s hope a decent politician such as John Pesutto reflects and acts on those other Christian ‘wonderful things’ that came with colonisation – the concepts of confession, forgiveness, redemption, and gratitude that replaced the ‘payback’, revenge, vendetta, and thanklessness that had existed here for 50,000 years and are now returning with the acceptance of ‘Woke’ ideology.

Roger Karge is a Melbourne-based businessman and Editor of the Dark Emu Exposed website.