Advance Australia Fair
An Identity Beyond Vegemite, Sausages, Cricket And Beaches
B. D. Sarmiento
“FROM THIS TIME FORWARD, under God.[1] I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people…”
From my view, it seems that somewhere in the late 2010s there was a marked turning point when Australia’s national identity came out of focus. I could attempt to prove this by anecdotally noting the decrease in how often I sing the national anthem, or see the Australian flag flying proudly, but these factors would only signify a dogmatic and baseless unity that we can observe is leading nations like the U.S. to ruin. Rather, the contemporary public consciousness silently admits that all that binds Australians together is a subscription to a vague set of democratic and liberal values. The current situation isn’t sufficient. If this is to be the case, what separates our grey horde of urbanites and disregarded rural population from any other in the Western world?
It isn’t necessarily the problem that Australia isn’t a nation-state (in an ethnic sense, at least); it’s that our authentic passion for diversity and multiculturalism, along with a burgeoning acknowledgement of our tainted history and drive for reconciliation and harmony, has been lost. In its stead, the two general viewpoints of an increasingly polarised Australia either yearn for a return to the stable, old, unreflective order or replace true appreciation of diversity with a celebration of un-whiteness. This polarisation can be (if slightly reductively) chalked up to a pattern in western liberal democracies driven by attention hungry media, as can be seen in rising right wing figures/parties such as the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, Trump, or Germany’s AfD. Anglo-Christian domination and its common belief system in Australia is long gone, as an influx of migrants brings other religions, and Christianity only erodes with increasing atheism and spiritualism. A subset of white Australians thus feel disillusioned with the new Australia, often perverting this into anti-immigration stances.
In these countries and our own, I feel, ‘progress’ has been perverted from a term signifying a rallying point of Australians to one associated with controversial pushes by one side of a rigid political dichotomy. The 2017 Marriage Equality Ballot and last year’s Voice to Parliament display this perfectly; both advocated for progressive change, enfranchising historically marginalised communities. But only the Voice to Parliament unveiled a stark urban/rural split, with the rhetoric on either side being that the other was merely less educated and stuck in the past or enforcing needless and threatening change from a position of privilege and naivety (guess which one is which).
Whose democratic beliefs I share, Whose rights and liberties I respect, and unique lineages and cultures have been clumped together for the sake of ease of labelling (E.g., “The Asian community”). This is manifested in foreign restaurants having degenerated into ubiquitous and generic clones, appropriated to be palatable to the pitiful adventurousness of the urban dweller. You have the choice of either going to the Italian place or some Japanese place (Shuffle around the nationalities for other circumstances, I’m sure they won’t mind).
Furthermore, if reasonable, recalibrating of national symbols (“We are ‘‘‘‘‘‘‘one’’’’’’’ and free.”) merely drive division rather than addressing the root cause of the enigmatic Australian identity. Alongside rights, liberties and democratic beliefs having been reduced to a democracy sausage, the right to go to the pokies and liberty to get tattoos as the actualisation of these has already largely been achieved compared to when they were first sought out before the 20th century.
But what do I want? Every Australian to get around a table and decide, “This is our national identity.”? “Let’s all go be nice and accepting again.”? I don’t know. Without faith in equality of opportunity and lack of social unity in a late-stage capitalist nation, what is preventing individuals from catching the nearest way? What’s the way forward for re-establishing our culture beyond the past British paternalism or the surgent, hollowly ‘diverse’ contrarianism? Am I simply harkening back to an idyllic past that never existed, constructed on the basis of vapid affirmations of friends? Or am I truly articulating the melancholic longing for a return to the inclusive Australian spirit and identity that lays dormant in the heart of every Australian? I am not to decide.
[1] *A person may choose whether or not to use the words ‘under God’. Pledge of commitment, Australian Citizenship Ceremonies Code