As I get older I get more confused about this BBQ stopper question

My own experience was the "Rambo Syndrome" one where a former PM Pig Iron Bob used the words "the Yellow Peril" to conscript me against my wishes and send me to fight the Yellow Peril in order "to save the lifestyle of the people of Oz". It was as much a lie as WMD by new Rodent and yes the media drummed up a thing of "baby killers" and the mushrooms spat on us if we tried to march on Anzac Day

but 40 years later the Yellow Peril come in on Jumbo Jets and live here [as long as they have money to buy Telstra shares] but if I was to emulate pig Iron and call one of these people "yellow" he would have me up in from of Aunty Pru before you could say Hairy legged Lesbian and off to jail for me for "racial prejudice" even though the word racial is not even IN the Act

So a PM uses "racist" words to drum up racism to pass a racist Act to FORCE me to do racist killings to save you mushrooms, but I am the bad guy if as the saviour, I even mention the same word. Errrr must have been some CHANGE in Oz values over 40 years!

That's Oz in the new milenium and it stinks if you are a bloke espec if a volunteer worker. I thought at the time "I am none too sure I WANT to save these generations to come from the Yellow Peril" and now they have become flesh I am totally sure I was right

and the band played Waltzing Matilda ..

What's un-Australian?

i) Supporting a US administration that unjustly detains terrorist suspects for years without hope a fair trial and doing nothing to object to this unacceptable state of affairs, not even for an Australian citizen!

ii) Detaining refugees for years without a hearing and sending them back to their countries of origin where they are mistreated, imprisoned or murdered.

The oath to Australian values to get a Visa is stupid. An agreement to follow Australian laws, respect Australian citizens, the unique land, fauna, environment, and our diversity, would suffice.

It is un-Australian not to know the invisible glow of burning gum leaves. This is a romantic country. Look at "what is", not "what is not"...

Kenneth Slessor puts it better:

South Country

"And over the flat earth of empty farms
The monstrous continent of air floats back
Coloured with rotting sunlight and the black,
Bruised flesh of thunderstorms:

Air arched, enormous, pounding the bony ridge,
Ditches and hutches, with a drench of light,
So huge, from such infinities of height,
You walk on the sky's beach

While even the dwindled hills are small and bare,
As if, rebellious, buried, pitiful,
Something below pushed up a knob of skull,
Feeling its way to air."

Then there are Lawson's poems of the ghostly drovers that cross the outback.

The Aboriginal poems of the Dugong.

If the Cricket, football or paintings and films don't move you, surely the poetry says something. The terror in the beauty of a country once cultivated by fire. Who could not be moved by these wonders?

What astounds and continues to depress me is how quickly we all seem to fall in line with the jingoism. Someone yells ‘patriotism’ and suddenly we seem to have hoards of people fighting each other to prove how ‘(insert relevant term here)’ they are. Flags come first but the beatings and the burnings follow quickly.

‘My country, right or wrong’ has been the war cry of the mindless far too often. Demagogues use it to steamroll over our consciences and propel us in directions that, after the fact, appear ludicrous. We all sit back and shake our heads at the Holocaust and say piously ‘those Germans were inhuman to do those things’. Well, I can assure you they were very human and it is THERE that the end point of cries of patriotism and nationalism lies- blood and death.

Make no mistake, the nanosecond that we put hard barriers around the concept of Australian, we open the floodgates of persecution. More than that, we legitimize it by enshrining bigotry it into the laws of our land. This is a corruption of our very soul.

‘Australia’ and ‘Australian’ is bigger than definitions. It is more than a statement on mateship, or drinking VB or any of the simple drek peddled by our so-called leaders. It is seen in our laws, in the actions we take locally and abroad. It is so much more than a page of words.

If we must make a statement about who we are and what we stand for, then lets sit down and draft a Bill of Rights for ourselves. Let’s do it right. Discuss it openly and set it up for everyone to see. But don’t let ourselves be pulled down into the squalid mud of demagoguery and political opportunism that preys on our weakest impulses.

Let us be the proud nation that others see us as and say not ‘My country, right or wrong’ but ‘My country- right and I’m keeping it that way!’ To me, that is the Australian way.

I agree mylakhrion,

please see my comparison to Hitler's final solution to the wholesale rape of our rights by Howard now, all covered up by Advance Aust Oy Oy Oy and 'av a Telstra share

see www.amandaforpm.com and > Nuremberg Revisited - it tells the story of how the holocaust was allowed to happen, using same jingoistic hoop la in Oz today

Other thing re HOW do we define or do we NEED to define being Oz, let me relate

Back in 1970 doing "Europe Tour" [almost compulsory for any young Oz back then] we were amazed that people would say hello Oz even before you spoke

A Pom said "you lost Oz? can I help?" so I actually asked him "I am dressed like you and look like you, so why would you call me Oz?"

"simple Guv, you people have a halo around your head that says we are Oz and proud of it - stands out a mile away, like we all look downtrodden"

It was like SouthPark "I think we all learnt something today" but I never really understood how they could SEE a halo

so maybe the answer is you just BE who you are and forget all about explaining it, but I would hasten to add that I would not be confident that the same is being said on London streets 35 years later

I sort of suspect the halo has slipped, unfortunately, or it looks more like a Bush

I agree mylakhrion that a Bill of Rights in this country is overdue. I have also said in some other post that national pride, is the kind of Pride, that is the deadliest of all sins. It was deadly enough to strike down Lucifer to the Hell as the condemned Satan.

To maliciously claim your superiority without moderation is a poisonous way to behave. The holocaust is a pointed example. But I've been told by OLO that I talk too much about WWII, so someone else can do this.

There is a difference between nasty pride and dignity. This Australian way has never really included patriotism. That is more of a republican American or French concept. We do, however, always hold our dignity as a sacred part of character. The convicts starved for dignity. The Jolly Swagman robbed a "jumbuck", but he was already robbed of his dignity. His ghost still hungers for it.

The Aboriginal people only ever asked for dignity with one word. Sorry. They still hunger for it.

A Bill of Rights will give us this dignity.

Before this happens, I am indifferent to the Australian flag and I don't celebrate Australia day as a matter of my family dignity. They were convicts wrongly sentenced. The Old Bailey never said sorry to us either.

Lawson talked about the "Australian gaze". Maybe that is the halo. We have a habit of looking over horizons, for rainbows, maybe ourselves, but above all, like Muriel stuck in Porpoise Spit: our dignity.