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To Render Australia White: Of Course, We've had Blemishes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2016
Extract
When I first saw the newspaper advertisementsfor the Coalition's proposed tax reform I was struck by the people in it — their whiteness and their white (British) names — Marge and Dave, Doug and Betty, Sylvia and Alistair and their children Alex and Kate, Michelle and her daughter Chelsea and so on. It was not that it came as a surprise; rather it was the recognition of a normalising of white culture firmly based in British traditions and heritage. Here was ‘white’ presented as homogeneous (we are all white), which denies the degrees of whiteness referred to by writers on whiteness. It caused me to reflect on John Howard's understanding of Australia, his view of Australia's past. His focus on a British white heritage is mirrored by his focus on Aboriginality. This is the key to understanding what the government sponsored advertisements reveal, either consciously or unconsciously, and the particularity of their representation of ‘white’ society. I argue that the implicit agenda of the tax reform advertisement campaign, with its concept of homogeneous whiteness, is the demise of Aboriginality as well as multiculturalism, and the effacing of otherness.
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References
Notes
1 The Coalition won the election by playing on ‘the politics of grievance’. Judith Brett argues that Howard's appeal to the mood of resentment was clearing a path for Hanson's racism: see Judith Brett, ‘John Howard and the politics of grievance’ in Geoffrey Gray and Christine Winter, eds, The Resurgence of Racism: Howard, Hanson and the Race Debate, Monash Publications in History, 24, 1998, P 728.Google Scholar
2 The Courier-Mail, 15 April 1996.Google Scholar
3 The motion passed stated: ‘this House (1) reaffirms its commitment to the right of all Australians to enjoy equal rights and to be treated with equal respect regardless of race, colour, creed or origin; (2) reaffirms its commitment to maintaining an immigration policy wholly non-discriminatory on grounds of race, colour, creed or origin; (3) reaffirms its commitment to the process of reconciliation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, in the context of redressing their profound social and economic disadvantage; (4) reaffirms its commitment to maintaining Australia as a culturally diverse, tolerant and open society, united by an overriding commitment to our nation, and its democratic institutions and values; and (5) denounces racial intolerance in any form as incompatible with the kind of society we are and want to be’.Google Scholar
4 Howard, John, 30 October 1996. Hansard.Google Scholar
5 See Partington, Geoffrey, Hasluck versus Coombs. White Politics and Australia's Aborigines, Sydney: Quakers Hill Press, 1996.Google Scholar
6 Howard, John, Sir Thomas Playford Memorial Lecture, Adelaide, 5 July 1996. Transcript, Prime Minister and Cabinet Library.Google Scholar
7 Howard, John, reported in The Age, 11 July 1997.Google Scholar
8 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (1983; rev. ed. London: Verso, 1991).Google Scholar
9 Howard, John, Sir Thomas Playford Memorial Lecture, Adelaide, 5 July 1996. Transcript, Prime Minister and Cabinet Library.Google Scholar
10 Howard fundamentally misunderstands the discipline of history, and Australia's history. See Richard Boswell, ‘History, the Nation and the Pasts’, Ockham's Razor, ABC, 27 April 1997.Google Scholar
11 See for example Rowley, Charles, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society, Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1970; Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier, Ringwood: Penguin, 1981; Henry Reynolds, This Whispering in Our Hearts, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1998; and Andrew Markus, Governing Savages, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1991.Google Scholar
12 Stanner, W.E.H., After the Dreaming: Black and White Australians — An Anthropologist's View, Boyer Lectures, Sydney: ABC, 1968, P 25.Google Scholar
13 Stanner, pp 24, 25.Google Scholar
14 My emphasis. Howard, John, Sir Thomas Playford Memorial Lecture, Adelaide, 5 July 1996: transcript, Prime Minister and Cabinet Library.Google Scholar
15 Howard, John, Address to Participants at the Longreach Community to discuss the Wik Ten Point Plan. 17 May 1997.Google Scholar
16 The energy spent on discrediting ASTIC and prominent Aboriginal people is remarkable when it is recognised that Aboriginal people make up about 2% of the population; the anxieties expressed resemble that of white South Africans and their concern with the land. It makes sense when put into the context of the settlement of the Australian continent which is best exemplified by the infamous map of Australia presented on the 7.30 Report by John Howard in which 78% of the land was dark brown (Aboriginal). Settlement and land are the cause of anxiety.Google Scholar