This is another take on the situation, some of it I find agreeable and some I don’t. What about you?
1. Set an end date for the culture wars on race and culture;
2. Complete land claims, truth-telling exercises, and place name changes by this date;
3. End the divisive practice of ‘Welcome to / Acknowledgement of Country’;
4. Replace the British Crown with an Australian Head of State;
5. Replace the 3 current Australian flags in official use with a new unifying national flag;
6. Reject the proposal for a permanent divisive ‘Voice to Parliament’;
7. End race-based programs and entitlements in government;
8. Introduce a Reconciliation Day public holiday on 27 January 2026 to mark the historic settlement of these issues and replace Australia Day on 26 January as our official national day.
I think a more intelligent response would be to have some sort of royal commission into why the, I believe $30B odd we spend on Aboriginal Affairs annually has achieved such abysmal results. Ideally that throws up some genuine solutions to that chronic waste but even if it doesn’t it will get across just how much we are already and have been spending for a long time now. If someone wants to argue for reparations, sorry mate we’ve already paid, it many times over.
Likewise it will get across that a lot ( but not all) of that waste is actually down to some very well paid Aboriginal bureaucrats.
We should be trying to really focus on how we are actually going to fix Aboriginal disadvantage
1, 3, 6 and 7 sound great!
But don’t fool yourself a logical and sensible compromise would work. The Left want conflict and division. They will always come up with other demands.
No. We’ve given more than enough ground already and look where it has got us.
Sorry no more.
1. Set an end date for the culture wars on race and culture;
Agreed by whom or how many? End of story.
2. Complete land claims, truth-telling exercises, and place name changes by this date;
See above.
3. End the divisive practice of ‘Welcome to / Acknowledgement of Country’;
This pompous virtue signalling really should stop.
4. Replace the British Crown with an Australian Head of State;
The Governor General is Head of State,
5. Replace the 3 current Australian flags in official use with a new unifying national flag;
What utter garbage. People have fought and died under that flag. No-one has done anything (apart from protest) under any alternative.
6. Reject the proposal for a permanent divisive ‘Voice to Parliament’;
Well, yes, but it should never have been brought up for consideration.
7. End race-based programs and entitlements in government;
Obvious.
8. Introduce a Reconciliation Day public holiday on 27 January 2026 to mark the historic settlement of these issues and replace Australia Day on 26 January as our official national day.
If we solve all of the above issues, we should have no problem celebrating Australia Day on the original date.
Sensible centre is an alias for Extreme Left.
The Centre position would be to make no changes.
The “right” position would be to dismantle the gratuitous waste of public funds constituted by the meant Federal, State and Local race based instrumentalities.
We could be one, not many.
I could probably reluctantly accept 2 – 8, but the reality is the left will never give up on 1, as is rubbed in our faces every time we give up the next slice.
The “British Crown” has no relationship in any way with Australia which has its own separate realm, The King of Australia. We have no authority over the British Crown. We should remember we tried to remove the Australian Crown and the proposal to do so was the very best that the advocates could come up with (with considerable resources devoted to the job by the government) and it was defeated in every state. Nothing has changed since then. Leave this one out as it’s a loser.
The “Voice” will go the same way. The suburbs will have their say after the elites have had theirs.
There should be no programs nor laws for any race. Government funded programs should be based only on need, not race.
Tough love is called for. Go to school. Get a job. Obey the law. Be responsible. That is the mantra for all.
We need truth telling alright:
“You were rescued from borderline starvation and state of endless total tribal war, and all that this entails. Whilst you seem intent on returning to all these things, we would much prefer that you remained with us, and our bright and shared common future as Australians.”
Sensible centre? Gullible fools.
If’n ya don’t drop your interminable petty grudges we might actually take you up on the genocide you keep hinting at.
If’n ya don’t drop your interminable petty grudges we might actually take you up on the genocide you keep hinting at. If we reach that point let’s see who chooses that remote drop of their ancestry as their primary identity.
You lost me around #4…
Taking the spirit of your subsequent post to “fight the culture wars”… no.
Australia is everything. There is no other culture, there is no other people, there is no cryptic history, there is no resistance.
The idea that we should capitulate to the demands of dimwits who make up paper-thin memes of “soveriegnty” and “first nations” and “country” and “invasion” and “80 000 years of unchanging gentle stewardship of nature” and “nation’s birth certificate” and “voice” is pathetic. These people do not want co-operation or reconciliation. They want dictatorship, denouncement, attainder, forfeiture, protection, institutionalization, legislation, command and control. They want power without accountability. They will put a boot on our neck- forever.
No.
We are a state of European Christians, and the most devestatingly final consequence of settlement of the great southern land was the wholesale desertion of Aboriginal ways of life to join the welcoming, tolerant, rights and responsibilities, Western Christian life of the nation of Australia.
Australia was founded by western men, Australia Day was founded by western men. The only people who get all identitarianly teary about the Australian Head Of State being a European man are pronouns-in-bio shallow sooks.
Do you think changing the date of Australia Day to another Arabic number in a Roman month in the Gregorian Calendar will satiate the power-hungry monomaniacs who are demanding it? Nope.
You think changing the flag will satiate the open-borders globalists who are telling you that the Union Jack is a symbol of genocide? Do you think that a new soft-focus spotty pastel flag will somehow speak to hearts and it will be hppily carried to the olympics but never carried to war?
Australia ain’t perfect, but it is what it is. Don’t like the flag? Then don’t fly it, yourself, or get a bumper sticker grassroots campaign. But don’t try to tell me I’m being dangerously racist nationalist jingoistic if I hold up the good old one.
Don’t like the day? Then hold your own party some other time if you’ve got any vim about you, I’m sure your righteous passion will make it a blinder. But don’t try to get in the way of my show.
Don’t like the civic rule? Then, dig in for a long game of getting into parliament and asking the GG to entertain some referendums… ie, do some bloody work and turn some heads, anything but the “I want a pony, and I want it NOW” demands of Lydia Thorpe or Danny Lim. Or stage a coup d’état. Pissy brit colonies like Fiji and Burma have done it, what’s a matter you?
Warriors of the Resistance, my arse. Trying to change the country via viral TikTok. Why would anyone want to appease these children, why would anyone think that appeasement would mean a ceasefire, instead of the obvious escalation in which indulging a spoilt child just leads to entrenching toddler tantrum tyranny?
Unfortunately the Cathedral is all-in for it, and if the country’s capitulation to Social Credit Score medico-fascism is anything to go by, my once grown-up country might just roll over and get buggered, forever.
They’ll agree and then demand more.
Sensible Centre sounds like a front for Liberals who want to get invited to cool cocktail parties.
m0ntysays:
February 2, 2023 at 9:58 am
Sensible Centre sounds like a front for Liberals who want to get invited to cool cocktail parties.
Nah, it’s just standard leftard Astro-turf, and even one as stupid as you are knows it.
They will never be satisfied.
Australia must “honour” the ten-thousand year hunter/gatherer existence?
Whose head could replace the English monarch’s on the $5 dollar note?
Eddie’s?
Linda’s? Marcia’s?
Adam’s??
Enough
Wally Dalí says:
February 2, 2023 at 12:35 am
That demands a thread of its own.
Send it to DB, WD.
Just put a referendum to abolish s51(xxvi). Racist legislative provisions have no place in a free society.
Nope – all of ‘‘em off the table, especially 4 & 8.
Stop agreeing the student union.
indubitably.
Eny chance of compromise is long gone.
I am a staunch opponent of the Voice, so called ‘climate change’ policies, the republic and the whole suite of left-wing rubbish that we deplore so much on this blog, but I could accept a new flag with the aboriginal flag occupying the place of the present Union Jack, if it would placate that lobby, rather than the damned Voice. I fully acknowledge the enormous value of the British heritage in our law and government, but that is history, and it’s a long time since we were a set of colonies of the Crown. The flag is our symbol to the world and it is just confusing for others to see the flag of another country in our own.
Bruce Pascoe?
Miksa
I could accept a new flag with the aboriginal flag occupying the place of the present Union Jack, if it would placate that lobby, rather than the damned Voice
That’s a bloody big “if”, there is no hope of placating the buggers.
I’m not in favor of changing the flag, for precisely that reason.
Miksa:
The flag is our symbol to the world and it is just confusing for others to see the flag of another country in our own.
Whenever that argument comes up, I wonder if the person can identify other flags and not be confused by some very similar ones. Many people would not be able to confirm which flag was the flag of Germany and which one the flag of Belgium; or know which flag was France’s and which one The Netherlands?
In fact, most people could not identify more than a dozen and I think that would be stretching the hope. As to explaining most national flag’s particular configuration, that’s even more complicated.
National Flags are not a country’s symbol to the world – the rest of the world has no input into an individual nation’s flag – rather, it is the country’s symbol about itself. It stands to say something about itself.
Our Flag
Our Flag wears the stars that blaze at night,
In our Southern skies of blue,
And a little old flag in the corner,
That’s part of our heritage too.
It’s for the English, the Scots and the Irish,
Who were sent to the ends of the earth,
The rogues and schemers, the doers and dreamers,
Who gave modern Australia its birth.
And you, who are shouting to change it,
You don’t seem to understand,
It’s the flag of our laws and our language,
Not the flag of a faraway land.
Though there are plenty of people who’ll tell you,
How when Europe was plunged into night,
That little old flag in the corner,
Was their symbol of freedom and light.
It doesn’t mean we owe allegiance,
To a forgotten imperial dream,
We’ve the stars to show where we’re going,
And the old flag to show where we’ve been.
It’s only an old piece of bunting,
It’s only an old piece of rag,
But there are thousands who’ve died for its honour,
And shed of their blood for OUR FLAG.
*Robin Northover (1986)
*(I did not know the name of the author until I just searched for the poem – I couldn’t remember one of the lines. I’ve always understood that the author was anonymous. Just shows we can learn something every day.)
Simply brilliant !
A few people above have disagreed with my suggestion about the flag. Fair enough – I know a lot feel strongly about it. I agree it probably would not be enough for the fanatics on the other side – what is? – but it would be quite a significant offering and might be worth a try, if only to refute the inevitable ‘raaacist’ screeching. And whatever the true purpose of a flag might be, the fact is that lots of people from the rest of the world take flags at face value and are confused when they recognise the British flag appearing on Australia’s.
And whatever the true purpose of a flag might be, the fact is that lots of people from the rest of the world take flags at face value and are confused when they recognise the British flag appearing on Australia’s.
Might make them do a bit of research to learn something about this country, the flag, and us.
Miksa
the fact is that lots of people from the rest of the world take flags at face value and are confused when they recognise the British flag appearing on Australia’s.
Miksa
I quickly checked the flags of Hawaii (a state of the US) an Fiji (an independent Pacific Republic).
Both include the Union Jack in the upper left quarter. There must be many confused people around the world.
And even New Zealand under Ardern retained the Union Jack in its flag.