Huge Piss Baby Tony Abbott Says Jan 26 Was “Good” For Indigenous Aussies

Tony Abbott reckons that despite massacres, genocide, institutionalised abuse, tactical eradication of languages and culture, and discrimination, the arrival of the First Fleet was a pretty good thing for everyone, really,Aboriginal people included.”

Hmmmm.

“What happened on the 26th of January 1788 was on balance, for everyone – Aboriginal people included – a good thing because it brought Western civilisation to this country, it brought Australia into the modern world,” he told 2GB radio this morning.

It follows an op-ed penned for The Australian, in which the former Prime Minister argues that while things aren’t great now, Indigenous Australians were also given the gifts of modernity (electricity! vaccinations!) so on the whole of it, could they shut up about January 26, please?

Sure, not everything’s perfect in contemporary Australia; and it’s possible that Aboriginal life could have continued for some time without modernity bursting upon it, had governor Arthur Phillip not raised the Union flag and toasted the king on January 26, 1788, but it’s hard to imagine a better Australia in the absence of the Western civilisation that began here from that date. The rule of law, equality of the sexes, scientific curiosity, technological progress, responsible government — plus the constant self-criticism and lust for improvement that makes us so self-conscious of our collective failings towards Aboriginal people — all date from then; and may not have been present to anything like the same extent had the settlers fanning out from Sydney Cove been other than British.

So British colonisation is good… because otherwise, another (less good) country would have invaded? Okay.

It also touches on this insanely racist argument that conservatives like to wheel out from time to time, that says if Indigenous Aussies aren’t happy the current system, they can piss off back to the bush. It’s an argument used to silence our First Nations, rather than acknowledge the ways in which the systems our country is propped up by is skewered them.

About halfway through the piece, Abbott also comes in with this belter of an argument: that seven – white! – people were executed for their involvement in the Myall Creek massacre, while failing to mention that their crimes were murdering up to 30 unarmed Indigenous Australians.

And while many Aboriginal people were exploited and mistreated, seven white men were hanged after the Myall Creek massacre in 1838.

The Myall Creek massacre is notable, btw, as the only massacre in which colonists were brought to justice. In every other aspect it is depressively common.

Abbott finishes his piece by declaring that “This Friday I will gladly join millions of my ­fellow Australians to declare my faith in what, to us, is surely the best country on earth.”

His prime ministership (which ended in 2015) proved that Australia was a pretty great place to be for straight, white, middle class and cisgender men – and was categorised by a failure to acknowledge the experiences of anyone who fell outside that narrow bubble, let alone work to fix them.

Let’s finish this article on the note it deserves.

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