Cato the Elder’s rhetorical phrase comes to mind when reflecting on the present sorry state of Australia. The left’s propaganda against our country seems to proceed relentlessly according to their schedule. Every day more and more Australians are feeling embarrassed to celebrate their own history and achievements. We are becoming a nation with no practical sense of patriotism and pride in our history.

Australians have become a people with only a distorted memory of the past. Arguably, a people without a clear understanding of the past can be much more easily manipulated. The indoctrination of our children by the illiberal ‘elites’ serves this purpose of not only erasing our history, but also vilifying and degrading it.

In fact, the intention of the ruling classes is precisely to turn everyone into haters of their nation and haters of their neighbours, as well as into complacent and submissive slaves of the oppressive ruling classes.

In this context, the week leading up to Australia Day has become a distasteful concoction of constant whining, recriminations, and accusations. It results in the excoriation of those who want to proudly express their Australian nationality.

This year, we have again witnessed the protracted and unrelenting denunciation of Australia Day – a day which supposedly should bring Australians together to celebrate our democratic system of government, the ‘fair go’ attitude of Australia’s people, and the personal freedom enjoyed by its citizens. However, this idyllic view of Australia Day has been brutally disrupted by those who regard Australia’s national day as ‘Invasion Day’, a day of mourning to lament the arrival, on January 26, 1788, of Captain Arthur Phillip in Sydney Cove.

Considering the unabated racial hectoring it is not so surprising that big corporations have waded into the political debate by shadow-banning Australia Day as if it were a toxic product. In unashamedly promoting the politics of the Indigenous lobby, these corporations disregard the real function for which they were established and misuse the financial resources of their shareholders.

For example, supermarkets decided not to stock Australia Day products ahead of January 26, ostensibly for commercial reasons, but also because the celebration of our national day was deemed insensitive to the Aboriginal industry.

Likewise, just a few weeks ago, Australia’s High Commissioner in London cancelled the traditional Australia Day celebration because it was too ‘sensitive’. Surely, this cancellation is as imprudent as it is unhelpful because it effectively prevents people from celebrating Australia Day with pride and enthusiasm…

Last week, it was also rumoured, if not argued openly, that the next Governor-General should be Aboriginal. If the rumours are correct, then they would further provide evidence that ‘race’ – a characteristic over which people have no control – largely decides what opportunities are available to Australians.

These racial considerations represent a retrograde step that makes the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 – a federal law aimed at making ‘race’ irrelevant in the distribution of burdens and benefits – an embarrassing remnant of a saner past. The intrepid Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jacinta Price, commenting on this rumour, has already said that race should not be considered in the selection of the next Governor-General.

Of course, the nation’s ruling classes have a vested interest in fomenting a divisive racialist agenda that seriously undermines political equality. Their primary goal is not social amelioration but, as Senator Price puts it, to divide Australia along ethnic and cultural lines by entrenching racial separatism and legally enshrining ‘the idea that Aboriginal people are perpetual victims forever in the need of special measures’.

Consequently, as the protests on Australia Day indicated, Australia has gradually become a racist county, where a person’s opportunities no longer depend on merit, but on the colour of their skin. Talking about race all the time is itself a sign of cataleptic racism and indicates that Australia is inexorably becoming a racist country. The racialist bureaucracy needs to promote racial hatred and discord as a Machiavellian mechanism for gaining more power and control over society.

However, if you dare to criticise the ubiquitous Welcome to Country ceremonies, you are likely to be labelled a racist. There are professional people who refuse to take the top job in their organisations because they do not want to demean themselves by repeating these meaningless references to ‘past and present (and sometimes even emerging) leaders’ because, in addition to compromising free speech, it would entrench the policies and philosophy of victimisation in the Australian psyche, and make all Indigenous Australians into perpetual victims of discrimination.

In continuing the victimisation narrative, reconciliation becomes impossible because there will always be new reasons for maintaining, even nurturing, the victimisation story. The stranglehold that Aboriginal politics is exerting on Australian society has caused these Woke actions, so prominent in the week leading up to Australia Day.

An analogy is helpful here to elucidate this point. There was a time, not so long ago, when females, simply on the basis of their sex, were effectively denied an opportunity to serve in the Parliament. David Furse-Roberts’s book Menzies: The Forgotten Speeches has an entire chapter on the ‘Status and Role of Women’. The first section in the chapter, entitled ‘Women for Canberra’, is based on a broadcast delivered by Menzies on 20 January 1943. There, Australia’s longest-serving Prime Minister said:

Of course, women are at least the equals of men. Of course, there is no reason why a qualified woman should not sit in Parliament, or on the bench, or in a professional chair, or preach from the pulpit, or, if you like, command an army in the field. No educated man today denies a place or a career to a woman because she is a woman.

But there is a converse proposition which I state with all respect but with proper firmness. No woman can demand a place or a career just because she is a woman. If it is outmoded and absurd to treat a woman’s sex as a political disqualification; it seems to me equally absurd to claim it as a qualification in itself…

Menzies’ argument could equally be applied to the current ‘race’ debate. Indeed, following his argument, people should not be preferred simply because they are Indigenous, or because of the colour of their skin.

It appears that the overwhelming majority of Australians support Menzies’ view. The lobby group, ADVANCE, recently released the results of an exclusive national polling that shows 69.5 per cent of Australians support laws that would stop politicians from changing the date of Australia Day. It noted that this is: ‘…a massive majority of Australians who support enshrining January 26 in law, and guaranteeing it can only be changed after a vote of the Australian people.’

Subject to the correctness of the poll’s results, Australians may well be interested in ensuring that Australia remains (or rather ‘becomes’) a colour-blind society. Such a result might be achieved if Australia were to repeal section 51(xxvi) of the Constitution, which confers legislative power on the Parliament to make laws for the ‘people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws’.

In this context, the proposal of Liberal Senator, James Paterson, to amend the Constitution to remove the race power altogether is a sensible, even a most urgent task, to make this country colour-blind and unite all Australians. But the implementation of his proposal would require a referendum – not precisely the most exciting prospect right now.

Why not call the week in which Australia Day falls ‘Australia Woke Week’? During that week, Australia’s Wokerati ‘elites’ would then be able to celebrate and propagate their race-based policies. Provided they restrain themselves for the remainder of the year, the recognition of Woke Week would be a welcome development, which might free Australia from the racialist bureaucracy for the rest of the year!

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Gabriël A. Moens AM is an emeritus professor of law at the University of Queensland and served as pro vice-chancellor and dean at Murdoch University. 

Augusto Zimmermann is professor and head of law at Sheridan Institute of Higher Education and served as associate dean at Murdoch University. He is also a former commissioner with the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia. 

Zimmermann and Moens are the authors of ‘The Unlucky Country’ (Locke Press, 2024) 

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