1975 - 37 years ago today .... and the liberal polititians are still just as disdainful of democracy

The dismissal of the Whitlam government on November 11, 1975, is singularly important to Australian history.

Even now, this severe test of our democratic institutions is poorly grasped. Our haziness around the facts has led to many rationalising the dismissal. These rationalisations focus on Whitlam's personality, his alleged lack of strategy or claims that the government was "disintegrating anyway".
None of this is adequate — these rationalisations show a troublingly casual disregard for democratic process.
But facing the facts of our past can teach us how to better face the present. Without a clear grasp of the facts, our interpretations of political events are bound to go astray.
In a time of "fake news", it is crucial that we remain committed to the facts — whether they tell us what we want to hear or not.
Here are five facts you need to know to understand why Whitlam's dismissal matters.

1. The 'supply crisis' was actually over

In the weeks before Whitlam's dismissal, the Senate was frozen. The Liberal opposition were starving the government of funds by repeatedly deferring the vote on its money bills, creating a "supply crisis".
In response, Whitlam called a half-Senate election. Governor-general John Kerr agreed and was exchanging draft documentation with Whitlam — it was already being announced on ABC radio's PM program.
The Liberal Coalition had used the same strategy to block the government in 1974. In response, Whitlam had consulted with then governor-general Paul Hasluck and called an election. The money bills were passed as soon as the election was called.
This sequence was about to be repeated in 1975. Instead, Kerr "ambushed" Whitlam, dismissing him just hours after he announced the Senate election.

2. Kerr's second dismissal

After Kerr sacked Whitlam, the House of Representatives met in the afternoon. Kerr's newly-appointed prime minister Malcolm Fraser was defeated in a "no confidence" motion.
By the afternoon, the Senate passed supply, resolving the supply crisis.

Next, the Speaker of the House went to advise the governor-general that the House had no confidence in the Fraser government.
Kerr simply refused to see the Speaker or receive the motion of no confidence.
In short, he rejected the democratic role of the House of Representatives in the making and unmaking of governments.
This, argues historian Jenny Hocking, was "Kerr's second dismissal: the dismissal of the Parliament".

3. Kerr believed he had a green light from Buckingham Palace

Kerr's recently released papers show he was seeking advice on using the "reserve powers" to dismiss Whitlam long before was previously revealed.
This included consultations with Prince Charles, the Queen, and the Queen's private secretary, Martin Charteris.
The Palace offered to delay Kerr's recall to help the governor-general sack Whitlam before Whitlam could sack him.
The Palace didn't counsel Kerr to consult with Whitlam, nor did it contact Whitlam. Kerr took this as a green light.

4. Fraser and Kerr were in secret phone contact

Former Liberal Senate leader Reg Withers recently revealed that Kerr had already decided to act against Whitlam in the week before November 11 and Fraser was aware.
In utter disregard for our constitution and political conventions, the pair were in secret phone contact the week before the dismissal.
Their deception around this was sustained for decades.

5. Two High Court justices secretly advised Kerr

In an egregious breach of the separation of powers, Chief Justices Garfield Barwick and Anthony Mason advised how to dismiss a government.

Kerr's papers show Mason secretly advised him for months leading up to the dismissal, and both during and after it.
Mason even drafted a letter of dismissal for Kerr.
Mason's central role was unknown before the release of Kerr's papers.
Kerr and Barwick — a former Liberal minister — colluded to deceive the public.
By focusing attention on Barwick, they shielded Mason from public view.
Christopher Pollard teaches philosophy and sociology at Deakin University.

Ageism

Euthanasia: How ageism warps the debate

By Jane Caro

The elderly are often called vulnerable, but they do not necessarily lose their common sense or their desire for autonomy as they age. (AAP/Glenn Hunt)

An elderly friend of mine (she is in her late 80s) has put together a very thorough suicide plan.

When she feels she has had enough or if she receives a diagnosis that offers nothing but decline, misery and suffering, she will take her own life.

She also plans to warn friends and family via a note on the door telling them not to enter but to call the police to save them from finding her body.

She talks about her plan very cheerfully. She is not a fool and knows that at her age death is not far away.

She simply wants to control her demise in the same way as she has controlled her life.

To her, it is about her dignity and her rights as an individual. She has repeated on many occasions that she particularly wants to avoid what she calls scornfully "lovely palliative care".

The very idea of that, she says, sends shivers down her spine.

The next major life event

Unsurprisingly, my friend is a passionate supporter of voluntary euthanasia. Among her peers, this is common.

Indeed, if you ever attend an event where the issue is debated you will see that the audience is full of grey heads. For them, death is not theoretical.

Younger people often regard death and dying as things that lie a long way in the future.

For the elderly, however, death is the next major event in a long life.

It is interesting to watch their reaction when a well-meaning medico or religious figure begins to give their reasons for not supporting the right to die.

Sometimes the angry mutterings are audible. My friend is given to asking forthright and blunt questions at such forums, designed to make her opponents squirm.

It is my observation that people do not get more biddable as they get older. On the contrary, many of their inhibitions seem to disappear and they can become quite confrontational.

They need to.

Vulnerable isn't a synonym for older

Recently, I helped launch a research report by The Benevolent Society (not, I hasten to add, an official supporter of euthanasia) about the attitudes that drive ageism.

As I read the report, it struck me how much ageism plays its part in the way elderly people are talked about in the euthanasia debate.

They are often called the "vulnerable" elderly and much attention is given to their fears about being a burden on either their children or society. There is a concern that frail older people could be coerced into ending their lives.

Some of these concerns are important but good, comprehensive legislation with sensible and strict guidelines should be able to protect people from such unscrupulous and rare pressure.

However, old people do not necessarily lose their common sense or their desire for autonomy as they age and nor should they lose their rights to make their own decisions.

They do not become wrinkly, grey-haired children with the passing of the years.

Patronising begins at 60

I have noticed since I turned 60 and my hair has gone quite grey, a tendency for some younger men (taxi drivers are particularly guilty) to call me "dear".

I sense it is the beginning of the belittling that inevitably accompanies ageing.

Even the exaggerated awe that greets older people who still run marathons or swing dance carries is a form of talking down to the old. Just because I am getting older and greyer does not mean I am losing my marbles or am any less deserving of being taken seriously.

Perhaps that is why the elderly mutter so furiously as they watch those younger than themselves discuss their rights to decide their own fate. They feel that they are not being taken seriously. They — quite rightly — feel patronised and condescended and they resent it. We will too, if we are lucky enough to live as long as they have.

Worse, the way their independence and autonomy is so easily dismissed, the way they are stereotyped as somehow no longer capable of making their own decisions, only confirms their fears about being at the mercy of such people when they are at their most vulnerable.

A sense of control

Older people are among the fiercest supporters of the voluntary euthanasia legislation currently before both the NSW and Victorian parliaments.

In 2013, men aged 85 and over had the highest rate of suicide by any age group in Australia. If my friend is any guide elderly women may soon not be far behind them.

But suicide means people leaving this world before they need to, and necessarily leaving it when they are alone.

Worse, it may mean some people killing themselves unnecessarily.

Many years ago now, when she was much younger, my friend had a serious operation.

She was given a morphine drip which allowed her to administer a dose of the painkiller whenever she felt the need. She found she hardly ever used it because the mere fact of knowing she was in control was enough.

Perhaps that is all most of us seek when we face the end of our lives. A sense that we — not the doctors, not the clergy, not the Government, not our children or even our partner — get to decide how we go.

Same sex marriage

As Australia faces a postal survey on same-sex marriage, we are seeing a steady stream of articles arguing the Yes or No case.

Many on the No side are prone to citing the Bible or appealing to "biblical values". But what does the Bible actually say about human sexuality and homosexuality in particular?

What follows represents a summary of critical biblical scholarship on the issue.

Critical biblical scholarship draws on a range academic disciplines including literary criticism, archaeology, history, philology, and social science to offer the most plausible, historically grounded interpretation of the Bible. It is not simply a matter of personal belief or citing official church doctrine.

Australian scholars are among leaders in the field when it comes to sexuality and the Bible. William Loader has written several books on the matter and this Anglican collection of essays is also excellent.

When it comes to homosexuality there are, at most, six passages of the Bible that are relevant. So what do these passages say?

Genesis 19 and Leviticus

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19 is well known. This is where the terms "sodomite" and "sodomy" originate, and it has long been associated with biblical condemnation of male homosexual sex. It is, however, actually about gang-rape.

In this story, the men of Sodom seek to rape two visitors (who are actually angels). Their host, Lot, defends them and offers them protection in his house, but offers his virgin daughters to be raped in their place.

Note to Margaret Court

Margaret Court is wrong to claim marriage is "a union between a man and a woman as stated in the Bible," writes Robyn Whitaker.

It is a deeply problematic and complex story that warrants an article of its own, but what is clear is that sexual violence and rape is harshly condemned, and so God destroys the town with sulphur and fire.

Despite the linguistic history of the word "sodomite", Genesis 19 has nothing to say about homosexuality or mutually consenting adults of the same gender expressing their desire and love.

Two of the laws of Leviticus (18:22 and 20:13) seem more pertinent. They call a man lying with another man instead of his wife an "abomination".

We should note first that the imagined scenario is a married man committing adultery with another male. It is not describing what we would understand to be a sexual orientation.

We might also note the inherent sexism here: women apparently don't have the same desire or their sexuality is deemed too insignificant to be worthy of comment.

Again, we need some context. Yes, this verse clearly condemns adulterous homosexual sex in calling it an "abomination" (to'ebah), but here are all the other things also called an "abomination" in the Bible:

• Egyptians eating with Hebrews;
• having an image of another god in your house;
• sacrificing your child to the god Molech;
• having sex with your wife when she is menstruating;
• taking your wife's sister as a second wife; and
• eating pork.

Banned likewise is wearing mixed-fabric clothing, interbreeding animals of different species, tattoos, mocking the blind by putting obstacles in their way, and trimming your beard.

As you can see, there is quite an assortment of ancient laws, some of which seem to make good sense (such as no child sacrifice) and others of which the majority of Christians no longer keep (such as eating pork and wearing a wool-silk blend).

To claim one set as timeless truths while ignoring the others is patently hypocritical and goes against the grain of the text itself.

These two verses in Leviticus are the sum total of what the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) says about same-sex activities.

The New Testament

The remainder of the biblical references occur in the New Testament, written between approximately 50 and 110 CE in the context of the Roman Empire. The attitudes and norms of Graeco-Roman culture are critical in understanding these texts.

In Graeco-Roman society, there was an acceptance that men might be attracted to other men. Even if married (to a woman) and often prior to marriage, a wealthy man might have a young male lover or male partner.

In educational settings, several ancient authors comment on the male-male mentoring that often included pederasty (sex with boys).

The main ancient objection to male-male sexual activity was that one partner had to take the "woman's role" of being penetrated. In a patriarchal society, to be masculine was to be the active partner, whereas to be passive was deemed feminine and shameful.

These attitudes find their way into the New Testament in various forms. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, and 1 Timothy 1:10 list a wide group of people who will not "inherit the Kingdom" without changing.

Why some are boycotting the postal vote

While many same-sex marriage campaigners are calling for young people in particular to get their names on the electoral rolls, others are boycotting the vote altogether.

Paul is using a standard list of vices here to make a wider rhetorical point.

Where some English translations might include "homosexuality" on this list, the translation is not that simple, which is why various English words are used (adulterer, immoral persons, prostitutes).

The Greek word malakoi in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 means "soft" or "effeminate" and captures the Graeco-Roman distaste at a man taking a "female" role. In the Bible it is commonly used to describe fancy clothing, and outside the Bible was a term for cult prostitutes.

The word arsenokoites is rarer. Scholars have debated whether it refers to male prostitution or pederasty or something else. To translate it as "homosexual" is problematic for two reasons: it is unlikely Paul had any concept of sexual orientation and he was certainly not describing a committed adult relationship.

In Romans 1:26-27, Paul condemns people swapping out their usual partner for one of the same gender. He claims this is a result of idolatry and uses it as part of his argument for why one should only follow (his) God.

It is typical of the strong "them and us" rhetoric of the ancient world, serving a larger argument and is not a statement on sexuality per se.

As New Testament scholar Sean Winter summarises:

"Paul shares a stereotypical Jewish distrust of Graeco-Roman same sex activity, but is simply not talking about loving partnerships between people with same sex orientation."

Considering the context

We need to put all this in perspective. These are six verses out of more than 31,000 verses or roughly 0.016 per cent of the text.

In contrast, the Bible contains more than 2,000 verses about money (and related issues of greed, wealth, loans, and property), and more than 100 specifically on one's obligation to care for widows.

In other words, monitoring and proscribing human (homo)sexual activity is not a particular concern of the Bible when compared to the overarching demand for justice, economic equality, and the fair treatment of foreigners and strangers.

For certain Christian groups to make this the decisive Christian issue is simply a misreading of biblical values.

Lest readers think the Bible is against sexuality generally, there is an entire biblical book devoted to celebrating human sexual desire. Written in the style of a Mesopotamian love poem, the Song of Songs(sometimes called Song of Solomon), speaks positively of both female and male sexual yearning.

Serious Christians cannot ignore the Bible. They can, however, make sure that they interpret it with all the tools available to them, that they examine their own biases, and stop over-simplifying the issues.

The Bible offers a wide variety of marriage arrangements, many of which we no longer condone. It never condemns same-sex marriage, partly because it simply does not address the issue directly.

It does, however, give us an ethic to guide how we treat one another: an ethic based upon God's generous love and a profound concern for justice.

Robyn J Whitaker is Bromby Lecturer in Biblical Studies at Trinity College and a lecturer at the University of Divinity.

Truth??

The former president of the Human Rights Commission has accused Australian governments of succumbing to “post-truth” politics in which evidence based policy is rejected in favour of populist decision making that “responds to fear.”

Professor Gillian Triggs today said Australian governments had resorted to populism when it came to the issues of asylum-seekers, refugees and terrorism.

She suggested the same-sex marriage debate was also taking place in the new “post-truth” climate and disputed claims there were insufficient protections for religious freedoms.

Speaking at the Australian National University in Canberra, Professor Triggs said that religious freedoms were upheld in the constitution and took a swipe at The Australian newspaper for its coverage of the debate.

“If you read the constitution you would know that there’s a provision in the constitution — a rare provision in the constitution for human rights,” she said. “And that protects the right to freedom of religious expression.”

“It’s one of the best protected rights under Australian law. Yet we now have a full on daily campaign to argue that we do not have the right of adequate protection of religious freedom in this country.”

Professor Triggs was delivering a speech earlier today on the future of social policy making at the Power to Persuade Symposium directed by UNSW Canberra.

She used the platform to lash out at the ethics of public servants, warned against the rise of executive government and defended her controversial report into children in immigration detention.

“A culture of post-truth has enabled government and parliament to reject evidence based reports by credible agencies in favour of populist decision making that denies the truth and responds to fear,” she said. “And this is particularly the case in relation to refugees and asylum-seekers; to terrorism; to conflict and to criminal matters in general.”

She accused the Coalition government of politicising her Forgotten Children inquiry, arguing that the political messaging around deaths at sea and boat turn-backs made it hard for the report to cut through.

“No other country in the world mandates the detention, in practical terms, indefinitely for many, of asylum-seekers and refugees including children,” she said. “The government rejected the report and said it was biased on the false ground that the inquiry should have been brought earlier when the Labor Party was in power.”

“It was never about the fact of detention. It was about the long-term medical physical and mental health impacts (for children),” she said. “Holding children in detention was not a deterrent to people-smugglers.”

“Talking of truth and persuasion, one of the greatest myths that we had so much trouble dealing with, is the myth that you need to treat people in these inhuman and illegal ways in order to stop the boats and to save drownings at sea.”

Professor Triggs also accused some bureaucrats of providing unethical advice to government ministers — advice she said was inconsistent with Australia’s international treaty obligations.

“I think there has been a definite trend in Australia for public servants to be more concerned about doing what the minister has asked them to do ... I think that they have not always met the ethical underpinnings of good government,” she said.

To make her case, she cited a move by the government to make a retrospective change to the Migration Act allowing it to transfer to Nauru a female Bangladeshi woman who was found to be a genuine refugee.

She said the change to the Migration Act was made as the government was staring down a High Court challenge. “Within two or three weeks of the litigation getting to the High Court they passed a piece of legislation retrospectively to provide a basis on which she (the refugee) could be returned to Nauru,” Professor Triggs said.

“My question is — who are the lawyers, who are the public servants who are drafting these laws and advising a minister that it’s possible to retrospectively to pass laws of this kind?”

“If you are a practising barrister and solicitor in NSW and Victoria you have an obligation under the codes of conduct for the profession to act not only ethically but, believe it or not, consistently with human rights.”

“How can the public service produce this kind of advice to a minister? Who drafted this legislation? And is that advice being given to the minister that it is unethical … under Australian law due to our duty of care and contrary to our international treaty obligations.”

Professor Triggs also identified what she said was an “extraordinary” and “unprecedented” growth in executive decision making, saying this was contrary to the principle of the separation of powers.

‘We’ve seen a corresponding diminution in the role of the courts,” she said. “As a lawyer, that is something that I am especially concerned about.”

Doctor 25 May17

I visited the GP and she said:

 

1  that people who have experienced abuse in childhood often have fibromyalgia ... so my chronic pain is not unusual.

2 that my experiences have left me with a high degree of empathy

Diary 11Apr17

I'm changing the purpose of this blog .... till now it's been a rant blog but I've realised that it's the best way to make a daily record of my activities.

So..... today ....
EFTPOS terminal
Reconcile CWBC cc
Payslip for Nat
Expense record

Normality

The other day the lunchtime conversation topic revolved around school experiences, tertiary study, work etc.  I listened to the common themes of student life ..... study life ..... and my inside voice was screaming at me .... my experiences were utterly different .... tales of student gathering ..... I had no friendly experience that I can recall .... instead I remember the aching loneliness of going into lectures and wondering where to sit that wouldn't result in pain and rejection.  

The table conversation delved into study habits and exam cramming ..... my memories are of feeling completely confused and useless .... not having even the most basic idea of what I was supposed to be doing.  ..... of reaching the time of exams and knowing that I knew absolutely nothing.

At the table I sat listening .... and thinking "This is normal life that I'm hearing about .... my life has been nothing like it." How can systems fail so badly that children/adolescents can be left out so completely.

Ornery issues

I'm surrounded by people who refuse to try to get better.  One has leg pain similar to mine but he won't experiment with the medication to find a dosage that works .... he just says "I tried that medicine at XYZ dose and it didn't work" .... I know that it works at a different dosage but he won't try it.

Another just complains and won't try to find remedies .... apparently it's better to make life miserable for other people.

18c

Since when did the person spouting racist hate speech become the victim?

We didn't need to have another inquiry to figure out that 18C is a necessary law. That fact was established 25 years ago. The overwhelming finding of that National Inquiry into Racist Violence was this: many victims considered the sub-physical forms of racial violence -- the insults, intimidation, harassment and aggression -- had a more severe impact than actual cases of physical assault. The violence of words could be as debilitating as physical violence.

The psychological effect of continual exposure to abusive and insulting language cannot be overlooked. Racial hate speech can result in insecurity and depression, preventing people from participating fully in society.

A major hurdle for this early inquiry into racist violence was that people who had experienced it were too afraid to come out and talk about it. Some said they feared retribution. Others said that nothing could be done to make the racial violence -- the abuse, insults, and harassment -- stop, so they'd rather not draw any attention to themselves. The inquiry had to create an outreach program to assure them they would be safe to talk.

Racial hate speech can result in insecurity and depression, preventing people from participating fully in society.

Through this early inquiry they also found that verbal violence often precedes physical violence. So section 18C was born. It functioned well for 25 years before being attacked by the Abbott and Turnbull Governments.

In those 25 years, only 1.8 percent of racial vilification complaints have ended up in court. Most are withdrawn, rejected or, most often, conciliated by the Australian Human Rights Commission. The Andrew Bolt, Bill Leak, and QUT cases may have dominated the news cycle in recent years, but the latter two cases were withdrawn and dismissed respectively. We'll get to Bolt.

Opponents of 18C like to stylise themselves as champions of 'free speech', and will point to the Bill Leak case to declare that 18C is broken. But the Bill Leak case proves the exact opposite. That case was withdrawn, but even if the case had progressed to court, it would have failed because section 18C does not function alone. There is section 18D, which defends statements that are in the public interest, in creative works, in debate or if they are genuinely held belief. Even though Bill Leak's cartoon was tasteless, and offensive to many, 18D covers artistic purpose.

Twenty percent of Australians say they have been subject to verbal racial abuse. That figure soars to 90 percent for Aboriginal Australians.

What's not covered by 18D?

Let's take the famous Andrew Bolt case. Bolt lost the case for two of his articles. In one of the articles, titled 'It's so hip to be black', he individually names several fair-skinned Aboriginal people saying they only claimed their Aboriginal heritage for personal benefit.

He did not lose this 18C case because he questioned issues of Aboriginal identity, as he claims. That conversation might have been found to be of genuine public interest, and covered by 18D. The court ruled his articles unlawful because they contained "erroneous facts, distortions of the truth and inflammatory and provocative language."

Twenty percent of Australians say they have been subject to verbal racial abuse. That figure soars to 90 percent for Aboriginal Australians. This law provides assurance to Australians of all backgrounds that, in the eyes of the law, they are not fair game. It says that public acts of racism are not tolerated. But this inquiry has sent the message that, under a Liberal government, the right to racial hate speech must be protected.

There's a sentiment that running through this debate that says racial hate speech is "just words".

Tell that to the woman who comes home in tears because she was abused on a train. Tell that to the child who is trembling because they've just watched their parents be harassed at the shops.

Since when did the person spouting racist hate speech become the victim?

Invasion Day 2017

Richard Di Natale
Leader of the Australian Greens

"Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and others have been organising major, organised protests on January 26 since at least 1938."

We all want a day on which we can come together as a national community to reflect on where we're at and celebrate what we are: a wonderfully diverse, open and free society.

But January 26 is not that day.

Many of us don't think too deeply about it. We assume that January 26 is all about barbeque lunches or Hottest 100 countdowns or cricket at the Adelaide Oval or just a day off, if we're lucky enough to get one.

But for January 26 to be about those things, we need to forget what it really commemorates: the First Fleet's arrival at Port Jackson in 1788, and Arthur Phillip's raising of the Union Jack on the land of the Eora nation.

It's only by forgetting that historical moment that we can ignore that January 26 is the anniversary of the beginning of an invasion -- an invasion that had catastrophic and tragic consequences for all the peoples and nations who had lived here for tens of thousands of years, and for their descendants.

Whatever else the history of the Australian continent since 1788 has been, it's also been a history of killing, colonising, dispossessing, converting, "protecting", assimilating and discriminating. All these horrors have been perpetrated by non-Indigenous people on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. And January 26 is a potent symbolic reminder of that history and our efforts to airbrush it.

Non-Indigenous Australians have been very adept at forgetting. Within a few decades of colonisation, our legal systems had convinced themselves that Australia was "terra nullius" before the Europeans arrived, and therefore that what happened afterwards was a "settlement". For the first six decades after Federation, history books barely contained any references to First Nations people or their experiences at all. I was still being taught at school during the 1970s and 1980s that Australian history was uniquely peaceful, that there had been no wars here.

The forgetting was so complete and so entrenched that the anthropologist Bill Stanner famously called it the Great Australian Silence -- a "cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale". To continue to celebrate Australia Day on January 26 is to participate in that cult of forgetfulness.

But that Silence is not universal. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and others have been organising major, organised protests on January 26 since at least 1938. Beginning in the 1960s, historians have returned to the historical evidence and corrected the record. The High Court dispensed with the fiction of "terra nullius" in 1992.

Most of what non-Indigenous Australians thought they knew about First Nations' cultures and connections with this land has been proven to be false. At school I learned that Aboriginal society was essentially a hunter-gatherer society -- one of many colonial myths that have been used to justify the dispossession of their land. Bruce Pascoe, among others, has shown the extent to which Aboriginal nations managed and cultivated vast tracts of the continent, to regulate all aspects of their relationships with the land from food production to bushfire control. Historians have obliterated the myth that the European "settlement" was in any way peaceful, or that there was somehow little resistance.

Australia's past still gets divided -- falsely -- into "black armband" and "white blindfold" history. Holding an Australia Day celebration on what is also known as Invasion Day or Survival Day is inherently divisive. It locks us into one position or another -- either we're celebrating "Australia Day" and forgetting its history, or we're remembering and resisting.

Unlike other nations with similar histories, Australia has never undertaken a national truth and reconciliation process which would force us -- and our governments -- to acknowledge the history of what has happened here and its contemporary consequences. There have been Sorry marches and official apologies and commitments to Closing the Gap, but sorry without consequence -- without a genuine reconciliatory process -- is not enough.

It means the history continues. Right now, Australia is locking up Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at up to 24 times the rate we lock up everyone else. Right now, Australia is removing children from Indigenous parents at a rate that is higher than during the periods of the Stolen Generations. Right now, Australia is still subjecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities to levels of policing and and welfare surveillance that very few other groups endure.

At the very least, all Australians should be able to participate in a national celebration.

While it's true that I'm not directly responsible for the bloody history, I do benefit -- like every non-Indigenous person -- from the original act of dispossession. To ignore this is to diminish all of us.

There is much unfinished business. The Union Jack is still part of our national flag. There are still sections in our Constitution which authorise the states to disqualify particular "races" from voting, and which authorise the federal parliament to pass laws discriminating against particular "races". There is still no formal Treaty. And we still celebrate "Australia Day" on January 26.

At the very least, all Australians should be able to participate in a national celebration. Moving it away from January 26 is not that difficult. Australians all let us rejoice... in changing the date.