My parents brought me to Australia 70 years ago. I am writing this letter to myself – and anyone else who will listen – to gather my thoughts.

I feel a strong need to do this because my thoughts lately have been greatly challenged by disturbing things that have been happening around me.

My family boarded the SS Strathmore at Tilbury docks on December 23, 1955, and disembarked in Melbourne on January 23, 1956. It was still the time of the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme, promoted by Arthur Calwell with the slogan ‘populate or perish’. Until three years prior to my arrival in Australia, migrants were predominantly Britons.

Subsequently, many more migrants were typically displaced people from southern and central Europe.

Perhaps we were in a minority, but my family’s migration to Australia was also assisted by being ‘sponsored’ by an Australian family that we’d met in England, posted there by their father’s army employment.

So, we lived in Melbourne for the first six months with our sponsoring family, 14 people in one suburban house! They were all ‘dinkum Aussies’ and we were all ‘New Australians’.

In later years, our family lived in Melbourne’s bayside suburbs and we children went to school there.

We grew up having migrant friends as well as friends whose families were Australian for several generations. We all knew one another in so many ways.

We were neighbours with some. We visited shops owned by some. Our doctors and dentists were some. We went to the same schools with some.

And who were they? As well as we Britons and the ‘dinkum’ Aussies, they were mostly Italians and Greeks. And they were great! No one could be called a ‘bludger’. They worked the hardest and invested their savings smartly in extra properties for family members. They learnt our language quickly and we, in turn, were quick to help them get it right. We read and enjoyed John O’Grady’s They’re a Weird Mob. Having a ‘New Australian’ neighbour or friend was a delight.

Being British, it was not an immediate legal necessity to become an Australian. It was not until the April 28, 1975, that I made the Affirmation of Allegiance to become an Australian Citizen, three days after Anzac Day that year.

I believe that the words our family used when becoming Australian citizens were: ‘I, …., renouncing all other allegiance, swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Australia, Her heirs and successors according to law, and that I will faithfully observe the laws of Australia and fulfil my duties as an Australian citizen.’ This was the wording established by the Whitlam government on the December 1, 1973, coinciding with the ending of preferential treatment for British subjects.

Despite ‘renouncing all other allegiance’, we could still retain our British passports and remain ‘dual nationals’.

Today, it is a ‘pledge of commitment’ that reads: ‘From this time forward, [under God,] I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.’ The prospective citizen has the option of making the pledge with or without the words ‘under God’.

Of course, at the time of my writing this, the British Monarch is now King Charles. Although the current ‘pledge of commitment’ does not include a declaration to ‘bear true allegiance to His Majesty Charles the Third’, Australia still has a Governor-General, appointed by the Monarch, on the recommendation of the Australian Prime Minister, because Australia is a Constitutional Monarchy with the King as our Head of State.

Whichever promise is made by immigrants to Australia, the important points are loyalty to Australians, sharing their democratic beliefs, respecting Australians’ rights, and obeying their laws.

Unfortunately, I don’t think every immigrant’s promise is being kept. And not all are being asked to make it in any case.

Gone is the feeling I once had that Australia had been successfully created from the meeting of peoples from many distant origins, all of whom came to this country with a will to strengthen its cultural integrity as well as share in its obvious benefits.

Now there are some who have come here because they want to take and not give; because they want to bully their way into Australia’s benefits without giving consideration to Australian ways; and even to aggressively impose their unwelcome ideologies with no acceptance of any disagreement: Invaders who do not want to change for us but who want us to change for them.

When my parents enquired, in the 1950s, about emigrating to Australia, although the Assisted Passage Scheme was a strong financial encouragement to do so, the Australian authorities still required prospective immigrants to undergo medical examinations, character assessments, and criminal conviction checks. Acceptance was also influenced by skills and occupation, especially those that supported the post-war economy.

From listening to current media broadcasts, I cannot believe that contemporary arrivals into Australia have all been subjected to anything like the stringent demands that were made of my parents. Otherwise, how do we have such noisy, persistent, objectionable assemblies of what appear to be groups intent, not upon bringing to the notice of the populace a genuine grievance about their treatment as immigrants, but upon imposing on us their obsessions about people in other countries whom they dislike, disrespect and even wish to be physically eliminated!

Ordinary Australians, like ordinary people in most countries of the world, just want to conduct their lives in peace and harmony, bringing up families and succeeding in their aspirations by purposeful work. None of them want their lifestyle to be sabotaged by newcomers who have no respect for democracy.

Democracy is the jewel of our lifestyle. As Australians, we can do what we like – within the rules of our laws and common decency. We always have choice.

So why have we let these people in, who have such vicious attitudes? And why do we let them continue to shout their obscenities at us from the streets? Why do we have to keep listening to them? Why do we still hear them, even after they have committed murder?!

I have travelled in many countries of the world, now, 70 years since I arrived in Australia. I very much enjoy being amongst people and surroundings that are novel and exotic to me. I have particularly appreciated situations in which communication with speakers of another language has resulted in attempts by each of us to learn what the other is saying, often by pointing at things, showing pictures, and making signs!

It never mattered that we knew nothing about one another’s personal circumstances, other than what was obvious. The same goodwill always seemed to exist; to manage to establish a personal relationship that suited the moment. It is the goodwill of humanity. I could always bring that back from my travels.
I want my Australia to regain its status as the country of migrants that made it so desirable in the first two decades after the second world war. If we all have the goodwill of humanity, we can do it!

There is obviously a noisy minority that does not but, surely, there is a huge quiet majority that does.

This is when the disturbing things that have been happening around me come into my thoughts.

Things that reveal a complete absence of loyalty to Australia and its people, total disrespect for our democratic beliefs, rights and liberties, and arrogant disobedience of our laws.

And this is when I have to ask: Where is the voice of the quiet majority?

It does not seem to be in our Parliament. How is it that a body of men and women that have been charged with conducting the affairs of our country by a so-called majority vote are not speaking for the quiet majority with the goodwill of humanity?

I could start answering that question by going to school. There have been persistent recent reports that children in our schools are being taught to be ashamed of themselves by so-called teachers who cannot refrain from restricting themselves to a curriculum of facts by which students can go out into the world well-armed to obtain work and contribute meaningfully to their community. Not only are they being subjected to teachers’ own opinions but to those teachers’ polarised interpretation of Australia’s history that it is not a country to be proud of. Patriotism is being demeaned.

Hundreds of thousands died under the Australian flag because they were patriots. My father and his father fought under their flag for the same reason. I have been blessed with a lifetime that has not required me to put on a fighting uniform. (My birthday did not come up in the Vietnam ballot but I would not have been a conscientious objector if it had.)

I have lived in this country now for the greatest proportion of my life and, although my British roots always determine my birthright nationality, I have become a very proud Australian patriot. So it is with great dismay that I am now witness to the many recent examples of disrespect for my country perpetrated by others who were not born here, and were apparently able to reach our shores with the intention of using ‘Hotel Australia’ for their personal benefit and attempting to subjugate our population to defer to non-democratic extremist religious customs from the dark ages.

The fact that some of these examples of disrespect have included murder and religious persecution transports my dismay into intense anger. How is it that this body of men and women that have been charged with conducting the affairs of our country by a so-called majority vote have allowed such people to reach this country and remain in this country when they have clearly not just espoused hatred but committed crimes evidenced by hatred and got away with it?!

We need the people of Australia to realise the importance of being patriotic. A true patriot would not be the person who says and does nothing about an obvious act of antagonism to our way of life. A true patriot would not stand by, seeing that a lie was said about our beliefs, our flag was disrespected or a child was subjected to being taught that Australia was a disreputable country that deserved to be shamed.

Our young generations will form the leadership and body of Australia’s future. It needs to be a patriotic future. Our young generation needs to understand now that Australia is the finest place in the world to live because they will be motivated to make it so.

I have lived in Australia since 1956, with a small interruption to live in Wales in the 90s. In all that time, I have easily fallen for this country’s charms and avidly become its patriot. I have especially felt my patriotism reinforced by the comparisons I have been able to make when travelling in other countries. I have been lucky to have been able to spend time in many places in the world and I can say, hand on heart, that Australia has afforded me every opportunity that I could possibly have wanted to create for myself and the people who matter to me a happy and meaningful life. I have never thought that I could have done better in one of those other countries.

This is the feeling that we must instil in our present population – and the feeling we must enable our immigrants to obtain.

That pledge of commitment has never been so important. But more important is the need to make the same demands of prospective immigrants to undergo medical examinations, character assessments, criminal conviction checks, and skills and occupation offerings as my family was required to satisfy.

As well, a minimum practical level of spoken and written English must have been reached before acceptance is given.

If the present population was proud of Australia and loved it for all the benefits they received and all about it that can be shared, they should be very happy to welcome newcomers whom they understood had agreed to the above requirements and given their pledge of commitment.

How many times have you been in a conversation in which you have ‘waxed lyrical’ about what you are proud of and tried to persuade someone to accept your point of view? This is what the patriotic Australian will do. The body of men and women that have been charged with conducting the affairs of our country must be reassigned to refute the lies about our democratic beliefs, prosecute those that disrespect our flag, ensure our educational curriculum is rid of an incorrect and distorted Australian historical record and jail or deport any and every speaker of disloyalty and hate for our country.

Then it can be a new body of men and women that have been charged with conducting the affairs of our country who can ‘wax lyrical’ themselves to broadcast a patriotism that will be irresistible. Then our goodwill of humanity will be recognised.

Then I can once again be an Australian who is proud of my country, pleased about my good fortune landing here and welcoming to others who come here after me.