The Hon. Robin Boywonder
Lord Water Cunntiham
What you need to know about Australia
Australia's national song is about a thieving itinerant worker who steals a sheep and commits suicide to avoid being caught.
Its national hero is a bushranger who ran around with a saucepan on his head (left).
Its annual national military celebration is commemorated as a biscuit. It celebrates a massive and humiliating defeat caused by British arrogance, idiocy and bad management. That’s why we prefer English migrants above all others. They make us look less stupid.
Its most iconic food is made from the dregs of the brewing process, literally by "scraping the barrel".
Most of its national icons are owned by foreign companies.
Its most famous piece of architecture was designed by a Dane.
Its most coveted sporting trophy is a bunch of ashes.
The last day of an Ashes Test is called a "sickie".
The country prides itself on its healthy disrespect for authority. It proved it at the Eureka Stockade when the miners fought the tax collectors (left). Sadly they lost. Australians commemorate this great defeat each year on 31 June.
Last year the Government celebrated with wild champagne parties the fact that its Ministers and senior public servants had escaped being blamed for their complete incompetence over the Iraq Wheat for Weapons scandal and that they had been successful in having private citizens accused instead.
In short, Australia has built an entire culture on being a nation of losers.
Although Australia is a monarchy, it is fiercely independent It went to war in 1914 because the British said to. It does whatever the US says, and whatever the Indonesians want. But we make the decision to capitulate all on our own.
Values
Australians respect women, other people's beliefs, democracy, and our mates and we always give each other a fair go. We're a tolerant society and if you don't understand that you can piss off.
Australia values and respects its women.
23% of women who had ever been married or in a de-facto relationship, experienced violence by a partner at some time during the relationship. ABS 1996 42% of women who had been in a previous relationship reported violence by a previous partner. ABS 1996 100,000 women (1.5%) experienced an incident of sexual assault in the 12 months prior to the study. An estimated 1.2 million women in Australia aged 18 and over had experienced sexual violence or its threat since the age of 15. One in six adult women in Australia had experienced sexual assault since the age of 15 years. 45% of women sexually assaulted since the age of 15 had experienced more than one incident. |
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And that's pretty good, huh? That's a whole half of all Aussie women who won't experience violence or sexual assault in their lifetimes!
Mateship
What is mateship? Mateship is pretending to be friends with someone who doesn’t want your job. A mate is what men have who are incapable of attracting friends (see "John Winston Howard") or of forming any kind of vaguely intimate relationships. So mateship is how Australian men pretend to have friends.
Who is a mate? Someone called "Jimbo Packer" or "Mark Taylor".
The only strange thing about mateship is that the person who promoted this value most loudly over the last twelve years is a man who has never had a real mate in his life because he is such a dork and a bogan. The people who call him mate only do it because he has stuff he can give them, like TV stations, or Australia (he gave that away to his "mate" Rupe).
Fair Go
The Fair Go is quintessentially Australian.
We'll always give everyone a fair go, no matter who you are or what you believe. Unless your name is David Hicks. Even the RSL won't give David Hicks a fair go, although he's done his time, paid his debt, etc. Mike Rann won't. George Newhouse won't.
So the real Australian Value is: we give everyone a fair go unless it is politically useful not to, or if it will do wonders for our media profile to attack them.
Easy Going
Australians take people as they find them but we only like to find them in certain places. Like England.
"We don't like to find them on the northern or western coasts. If we find them there we give them a nice get away on a Pacific island paradise called Nauru," says Minister for Proving Black is White, the Hon. Robin Boywonder (left).
We like English people coming here because it makes it easier to give them heaps in person.
We stole this country first and no bastard is going to come here and try to steal it from us.
Respect for democracy
All Australians respect democracy. Except politicians. The government respects the wishes of the people. It takes care to listen to the people and to their wishes, and then it does what it wants - in the people's best interest, of course. Or at least of America's.
Iraq, for instance, was in the people's best interest. Lord Water Cunntiham, an ex-Prime Minister, knew public opinion was almost universally against it, but he knew it was the right thing to do.
He knew for a certain, absolute and incontovertible fact that Iraq had WMDs and links to Al Qaeda and was responsible for 9/11 and that invading Iraq would make Australians safer.
Saddam was an evil dictator who terrorised his people, tortured them and killed them.
Of course it's unfortunate that we have terrorised, tortured and killed Iraqis just as he did, but it was in their own best interest. The ones we haven't killed will learn to appreciate Western values, western democracy, western freedoms - or else - if they haven't all killed each other first. And we know that for a certain, absolute and incontrovertible fact.
Anyway, just because all of those reasons turned out to be false and just because we might have known that at the time, and just because it turns out we've made Australia a more dangerous place and made it a specific target for terrorists, that doesn't mean we don't respect democracy. We do.
Specifically, we respect the democracies of Burma, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, China and Khazakstan.
Indonesia
Australian values are to agree with the Indonesians. And the Americans and the British, of course, but especially the Indonesians. Not that their values are similar to Australian values. Not at all. Far from it, in fact. For one thing, they’re Muslim.
But we have to agree with the Indonesians because they’re right there, hanging over our heads. 300 million of them and all Muslims. We don’t want 300 million angry Muslims on our doorstep. Plus we get cheap matches from them. Yes, we know they're crap matches! Shhh! Don't get them angry. And we sell them stuff. Can''t remember what stuff. Probably stuff we don't want.
Respect for Diverse Cultures
Australians have a deep respect for a wide diversity of European cultures such as English and American.
We also have Muslims here. It's quite strange. It's a bit like your eccentric aunt come to visit the family for a few days and she's still there two years later. You can't help wondering when she's going to go home so you can relax and be normal again.
Cultural Respect classes are held yearly in December and January at Cronulla Beach, a famous sewer near Sydney.
Tolerance
Australia is an extremely tolerant country. For example, we tolerate homosexuals. We just don't like them in our churches (even though the Bible says "Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved" John 13:23) and we don't want them getting married or having equal rights. But we do tolerate their deviant practices as long as we can avoid thinking about them.
Of course we know that "same sex attracted" people can have a hard time.
16% reported physical assault because of their sexuality 46% reported verbal abuse 47% in the street 10% were abused by friends 3% abused by teachers 14% reported feeling unsafe or very unsafe at school. |
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But if they would just stop being poofters the problem would be solved. And we would respect them so much more.
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