Slick Tony's Indigenous insincerity
“There is no country on Earth where people are made more welcome. There is no country on Earth whose people have more innate generosity to others. Yet for two centuries – with fragrant [sic] exceptions, of course – Australians had collectively failed to show to Aboriginal people the personal generosity and warmth of welcome that we have habitually extended to the stranger in our midst.”
These words are chilling, for their shameless, delued deception.
The Prime Minister’s speech requires a fierce riposte, on two grounds.
Firstly, Australia cannot currently claim to be a generous welcoming country.
We are not showing warmth to the stranger, as Prime Minister Abbott claims. In fact, in our name, Abbott’s Government is treating men women and children fleeing persecution with appalling cruelty. Australia does not welcome refugees or offer them safety. We push them back into the sea. We send them back to the horrors from which they have fled. We incarcerate, injure, threaten and destroy them.
Secondly, Abbott speaks of our failure to offer warmth and welcome to Indigenous people.
By this Abbott claims that it is white Australia welcoming a stranger to these shores. That’s right — a stranger?
Indigenous people have lived in this land for at least 60,000 years — to suggest they are strangers in this country is beyond idiotic and embarrassing and strays into being downright offensive.
It is white settlers who became the strangers in another people’s land. It is the white people who stole the land and committed the murders and took the children from their mothers. It is us, white people, who are the violent invaders — who did not deserve to be welcomed.
http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/slick-tonys-indigenous-insincerity,619...
