IN REMEMBERANCE

We are all inexplicably proud of the place where we were born, even those of us who were not born and raised in Linton. We support the local football, netball, cricket and eight ball competitions, we gather together on Linton Day for Australia Day and celebrate what has been. I have a problem at the moment trying to create a list of the things that we can be proud of today and into our future.

We had an international reputation for integrity and fairness, politeness and mate ship, and a proud tradition of protecting our country by shooting people we were told we didn’t like. We have apologised to aboriginals for invading Botany Bay and making them virtual slaves, from deliberately attempting semi-genocide, although we just called it ‘breeding them out’. We have had to apologise to children stolen from their Mothers because Mummy shouldn’t have become a Mummy in the first place. We had to apologise to this stolen generation of black and white children for the emotional, physical and sexual abuse carried out by our Carers, Warders, Superintendents and Matrons, not just the Reverend this and Father that.

Can we be proud of a Prime Minister who spends more time on the phone to the American Ambassador than to the Farmers Federation. We have to thank America too for allowing us to be invaded by boat people from countries they have invaded or destabilised for the benefit of their arms manufacturing industry. It’s obvious that Detroit was not a center for bullet making. We must thank our Prime Minister for emptying our pockets to provide gas to Asia whilst crying out about moratoriums on CSG because our domestic gas reserves beginning to run on empty. Cooks in Tokyo pay less for our gas than we do. We can be proud that we ship 5 billion cubic meters of LPG a year to China but can’t provide for our own domestic or industrial needs along with our cars for less than four times the international selling price.

Then of course our armed services. Fifty years ago we had a strong force located all around the country that enabled young men to be recruited from every state. Now we are struggling to maintain and Army that needs only two or three Generals, a Navy that can only man three out of four of our ships, and an Air Force that has ordered more aircraft than we have pilots to fly them. Mathematically we have spent more on toys for the boys than the boys that have to play with them. Who makes them to sell to us?

Our servicemen are going down like flies to PTSD due to multiple deployments to countries where we don’t even know who the enemy is. Where as many of our soldiers are killed by the people they are defending as those we are fighting against.

And what about our industry, our ability to be self-sufficient, to feed ourselves, to clothe ourselves and employ ourselves. What we have we export, what we need we import, it’s called ‘trade’. We grow a tomato and send it to India and then we can buy a tomato that we imported from Thailand, we grow a Banana to sell to Japan and then import a Banana from Barbados to feed ourselves. It’s called ‘stupidity’? We pull out fruit trees in the Goulburn Valley so as not to create a bio-hazard situation that might occur if we stopped importing food irrigated with sewerage from China.

We should apologise as well to our Farmers who these days may be better off if they were to go to Afghanistan where our government is subsidising the Heroin trade as a viable alternative to growing food.

We have cried out for investment in our growth industries from foreign sources while our superannuation funds are invested in the New York Stock Exchange and sucked out of us by the GFC. But maybe its our fault for being too greedy and wanting too much in too short a time that we might be better off blowing it all at Crown Casino, at least it would stay in an Australians pocket and not a quasi-American called Rupert.

Where is our pride in industry? Where are the factories that used to melt things, make things, bend things, stamp things and put things together. Where are the skilled tradesmen that could paint things and mend things, drive things and demolish things. Our new throw-away world doesn’t need them. Where are the Metters and BHP Steel, the car industry and the shipping industry, where has Crown-Corning gone, Grace Brothers and Scarf’s, Nutt and Muddle, Resche’s or even our film industry.

Of course trade is important to us, we still grow more than we can eat, still dig up more minerals than we can smelt, still sell natural gas that we apparently don’t want, and still dispose of more coal than we can burn for electricity. That is all good? We need to trade, to get rid of what we have too much of and to buy in what we don’t have enough of, but trade for trades sake, profit for profits sake is not the way to a secure independent future for our country. Our government doesn’t even want the tax that trade should be paying, its apparently easier to rip off citizens they don’t know than companies that contribute to their election funds.

But we are a proud nation. Proud to prevent too many religious symbols appearing on TV outside religious programs, proud to have 13 percent of our prison population holding foreign passports, proud to allow foreigners to own great swathes of our media, our farms, our wheat export facilities, our water supplies, our gas reserves, our mines, our shops, the few makers of things and worst of all foreign ownership of what we eat. We are not the food bowl of Asia, we are Asia’s cash cow, America’s supplicant and Britain’s estranged relative.

What we can be proud of dear readers is being Australian in the first place. When you look at all the turmoil in the world, the bickering, the backstabbing, political corruption, religious tensions, and racial intolerance we can be proud that we at least don’t have the turmoil. We are too complacent to do ‘turmoil’’. Bickering, backstabbing and intolerance, well, that’s normal isn’t it.

This Australia Day lets just ensure we all turn up for the CFA’s Breakfast confident in the fact that we have yet again elected a government that couldn’t give a toss about us but still will not leave us alone. Lets be proud to be Australian, to be tolerant of Golden pains Council, to look up to the Premier of Victoria and happy that we voted in a Prime Minister just as bad as the last few. The more things change in Australia the more things stay the same in Australia and I for one salute our stability through complacency.

HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY