Recently, I attended an outdoor painting festival. At the opening of the exhibition, the white Caucasian blonde MC did the usual ‘Welcome to Country’. That, in itself, was insane because from my observations there was not a single Aboriginal person in the audience of more than 200 artists and guests. Later the mayor came to the podium and did another ‘Welcome to Country’, but this time in a dialect of the local Aboriginal tribe. Almost no one understood what was being said.

The concept of a Welcome to Country for residents is offensive. Most of the audience were Australians, so the mayor was essentially welcoming us to our own country.

What, after 183 years since my namesake John Hartnett landed in Busselton, as a convict from Ireland, courtesy of His Majesty’s UK government, I need to be welcomed to the country I was born in and all my ancestors before me? And what about all the newly arrived migrants? Isn’t this their country too? Why is it important to incessantly welcome non-Indigenous Australians to their own country?

The mayor also talked about how the Indigenous people had to walk up and down the coast from the North West of Western Australia down to Mandurah over the past 60,000 years. More total nonsense!

The 60,000-year figure claimed by the mayor, as well as some activists and academics, is a ludicrous one. A few even say Aboriginals first arrived in Australia 80,000 years ago. Age-dating methods for the oldest evidence of occupation of the continent are highly debatable. The primary method used for dating rock art is thermoluminescence.

Age dating using thermoluminescence on silica grains (sand) is about as flawed a process as you might imagine. It involves unprovable assumptions and is largely driven by the belief that Aboriginal rock art is at least 20,000 years old.

‘The major source of error in establishing dates from thermoluminescence is a consequence of inaccurate measurements of the radiation acting on a specimen. The complex history of radioactive force on a sample can be difficult to estimate.’ Thermoluminescence Dating

I would say ‘impossible to estimate’ is more accurate.

The past history of radiation acting on the specimen cannot be known. It must be guessed and that guess is based on how old you think the specimen is. The specimen could be sand dug up from beneath the rock art under investigation, or a sample of rock inside a rock face or wall. The big assumption is that the specimen under investigation has been buried, or shielded, from external radiation (the sun for example), for its entire history until the researcher uncovered it. The method works well when you know the radiation history of the sample but that doesn’t help in measuring the age of an unknown sample, especially one believed to be more than 20,000 years old.

Then there is the carbon-14 dating method. This could be used to date the burnt charcoal found in old Aboriginal fireplaces. But carbon-14 dating also involves unprovable assumptions about the past unknown history of the sample. More circular reasoning. But it is worse than that.

For many decades scientists have searched the Earth for carbon bearing minerals, formed either from past living creatures like limestone, or from non-organic origin like graphite, which contain no carbon-14. They have never found any. This is a big problem because it means all carbon-bearing fossils, rocks and charcoals contain carbon-14. And using standard assumptions, the amount of carbon-14 in those samples never gives an age greater than 45,000 years. There is too much carbon-14 in the samples. But the technology exists to date a sample out to 90,000 years old, so it is not a limitation on the equipment. That means any Aboriginal site with burnt wood could never accurately yield an age of 60,000 years or more.

Thus, considering the uncertainty in these dating methods, it is unreasonable to hold claims of 60,000 years and beyond as certain or accurate. These figures are then used to solidify a privileged status for Indigenous Australians over others. I can imagine how this would be enhanced even more if the ‘Voice to Parliament’ referendum succeeds and installs some unelected bureaucrats to lord it over the rest of us.

It is nothing short of racism! Call it ‘arrivalism’ and argue over who arrived first. Just like kids playing on the street might argue over the rules of the game because of who first thought of playing a certain game, or who was the first one out on the street.

The ‘Welcome to Country’ is not a welcome to this country. It is propaganda designed to undermine the cohesiveness of the community. It is used for political gain, to bring in a communist agenda. Even many of the Indigenous people can see it. They don’t want to create division but live as equals with whoever calls Australia home.