I got up early this morning to celebrate Australia Day and to reflect on the fact that in spite of all those bastard pollies, Australia is still God's Own Country! And don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise!
It was on the 9th of December 1971, some six years after my arrival in Australia, that I appeared before Reserve Magistrate David Bruce Moorhouse at Arawa on Bougainville Island in the then Territory of Papua New Guinea, to swear allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her heirs and successors, and to observe faithfully the laws of Australia and fulfil my duties as an Australian citizen. (Remember how a certain senator claimed to never have sworn allegiance to Queen Elizabeth and her 'heirs', but rather to her 'hairs', and therefore King Charles was not her King? We allow such people to sit in our Senate, on top of which we pay them a base salary of $217,060 plus allowances!)
Several months earlier, on the 17th of May 1971, I had sat for a dictation test before the Justice of the Peace in Kieta on the very same island of Bougainville. The successful completion of this test was one of the many requirements before being even considered for Australian citizenship. (Mind you, methinks that under our present education system many native-born would fail the dictation test and not qualify for citizenship.)
I am led to believe that this dictation test is no longer a requirement. Indeed, your eligibility may even increase if you are totally illiterate, not just in English but even in your own native language, and if you hail from a country so benighted that your chances of ever becoming a productive member of our modern society are less than zero.
And so, instead of providing you with an adequate standard of living in your own country through our foreign aid program, we will be happy to empty on you a cornucopia of all the wonders of modern living which are even beyond the means of many of our own citizens. And should your lifelong dependency on our welfare state compel you to rape and pillage, there are numerous government-funded agencies to guide you through your various traumas and persecution complexes. Even if your anti-social and indeed criminal behaviour continues and the Immigration Department decides to deport you, we will pay your legal fees to fight us all the way to the High Court until the end of your days. If you hire some clever lawyers with whom to share the booty, you may even be able to claim a large compensation pay-out for wrongful treatment.
(It makes growing old that much easier, knowing that we won't be here to reap the bitter harvest, don't you think? Après nous, le déluge!)
But back to saner times before political correctness and an ever-growing list of human rights demands (what about the rights of those who pay for it all?) swamped all common sense and when the likes of me were supposed to know how to spell 'Askin' without ever having met the man:
As for all those other things mentioned in the dictation test, the deficits, the reductions in capital spending, budget gaps, and increases in taxes and charges, I think it was the French who first uttered the phrase "the more things change, the more they stay the same" (which sounds much better in its French "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose", said nasally through a stuffed nose on a cold Sunday morning).
Mind you, I wished they'd stuck with 'God Save the Queen'; after all, nobody knows the words of the little ditty which replaced it. Anyway, who's ever heard a policeman shout, "We've got you girt; come on out!" ?
I also won't hoist the Australian flag today. Not because my neighbour behind the pond shouts at me, "Just because you fly the Australian flag doesn't make you an Australian." She no longer does as she's gone to a higher place (or perhaps a lower one, in which case I'll meet her again).
No, I simply couldn't find an Australian flag that was "Made in Australia". The only flag I could find was made in a sprawling factory on the outskirts of Guangzhou for 43 cents by a 65-year-old man at the end of a 16-hour shift on the same production line as a Canadian flag, a Spanish soccer t-shirt, and a plastic stars-and-stripes Uncle Sam figurine.
Still, I am proud to call myself an Australian and to call Australia my home, and to do so not through an accident of birth but because of my own deliberate decision and years of hard work! Happy Australia Day!
