Australia for the Australians
New Thoughts on the “Lucky” Country
by Mary W Maxwell, LLB
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of “The Lucky Country” by Donald Horne. Recently, Prince William said that Australia is a lucky country, but that’s not what Horne meant. The original 1964 book says, in effect, “Aussies, wake up, you are riding on MERE LUCK. Your leaders are second-rate. Go on, put a little effort into it.”
Last week, at the beautiful National Library in Canberra, the Independent Scholars Association of Australia held a re-think of The Lucky Country. The first speaker, Julia Horne, did her late father proud, encouraging everyone, anyone, to put more imagination into seeing where the country could head. You go, girl!
Science was a main theme. Ann Moyal’s book, “A Bright and Savage Land,” is a truly exciting record of how ordinary folks in colonial Australia produced science, without benefit of -- I hate this word -- “funding.” Boys tinkered around, making discoveries and inventions. No reason they can’t do it today; the human brain hasn’t changed. Why be intimidated by words like “nano-technology”? Bring it all back to the human level, I say!
Ian Lowe, ex-Griffith professor, stepped up to the podium and noted that “Science is not a body of knowledge; it is a process.” By the way, Lowe thinks that Donald Horne’s reference to second-rate leaders in 1964 would be a compliment compared to what we have now.
A comparison between poet Judith Wright’s critique of Australia and Horne’s Lucky Country was offered by Joy Wallace and John O’Carroll, who charmingly read their speech in tandem. They are faculty at the (mostly online) Charles Sturt University.
Pat Anderson, chair of the Lowitja Institute, gave a retrospective of her own life as an Aboriginal child in Darwin, and mentioned the exhilaration of finding out, in the Sixties, that other groups were working for justice, too. (Have you noticed that the concept of justice is becoming a museum piece?)
Anderson observed that all the statistical gains by indigenous people since the Seventies are presently making a fast track backwards (except university enrollments). She wants the Northern Territory to have bilingual schooling, so the teachers can tell the kids, in their own language, “You can have a thrilling future if you bother to get educated!” Yay!
As for Horne noticing that we are situated close to Asia, daughter Julia explained that Dad had married a Brit after the war and went to live in England until 1958. Bringing back new insights to Sydney, he boldly urged his countrymen, “Have a look at a world map. See where you are!”
This theme of Asian Australia wasn’t developed at the conference. But it needs to be! The ethnic mix of the Canadian city of Vancouver has been more than 50% Chinese for years, and in Adelaide I can gauge from the number of Chinese students who are winning Permanent Residence, that this city, too, will have a Chinese majority one day.
So let’s get on with it and discuss how the values of East and West can be compared, and merged. There’s no percentage in reiterating that being an Aussie is defined by the events of the Eureka stockade or, God help us, Gallipoli. Also, we’ve got African and South American Australians now. Better get their input.
In 1961, when editor Donald Horne removed the phrase “Australia for the white man” from the masthead of The Bulletin, an indignant 25% of the subscribers promptly cancelled their subscription. Ha. Did they think their indignation was going to stop the demographics?
Note: I’m not suggesting that current immigration policy boils down to demographics. Policy boils down to policy, and that boils down to me and thee.
At the Independent Scholars meeting, David Headon gave a paper entitled “Nation without a Mind.” It was a pro-republic speech from a devotee. Actually, he yelled the whole thing; a new form of oratory, quite enlivening! Headon took aim at Quentin Bryce, our recent Governor General, for accepting the title of Dame. “She should have imitated Deakin and many others who refused a knighthood. This island continent is not Pommie HQ, thank you very much.”
To me, it seems that anyone who wanted Oz to become a republic, but allowed the bamboozlement of the 1998 referendum to take place, deserves what he or she got. (Incidentally, why would anyone trust the ballot-counting in Scotland’s recent vote for non-Independence?)
If you really want to be a republic, if you want to have leaders who aren’t tenth rate, and if you don’t like being ‘designed’ by a remote World Government, better do what Julia Horne suggests: Use your imagination!
Or to put it in the Australian idiom, and we can only pray that Australia will not lose its marvelous idiom:
“Don’t be a wanker, Mate. Why not tip the bastards out? Just use your bloody imagination!”
Mary W Maxwell, LLB, has spent half her life in the US and half in Oz, not counting a foray into the Middle East. Please see her articles at GumshoeNews.com. She is busy producing a show for the 2015 Adelaide Fringe.
