29 August

If ‘No’ wins in the upcoming referendum, Australia will be an international laughing stock. It’s looking like it may win too. Our history makes that unsurprising in many ways. I posted a while back about how what we call ‘the bush’ seems so empty of people. People travel there to be ‘at one with nature’. The reason it’s so empty? In the early 19th century, we organised hundreds of militia units, many of which included Aboriginal men forced to serve. These units rode through the countryside slaughtering Aboriginal men, women and children, so settlers could have their land, unchallenged. It was genocide. Some now won’t even vote Yes for a committee with no power to do anything. That’s our history in this place. Peter Dutton, the Champion of No, is a direct descendant of early pastoralists. It was pastoralists who perpetrated many of these atrocities.