TheBanyanTree: Musings on a day of national humility

[Robin Tennant-Wood]

            Today marks 225 years since the establishment of a British
penal colony where the city of Sydney now sprawls around the harbour. The
colonists promptly lay claim to everything on the continent – the extent of
which, at that stage, they were unaware – and displacing the indigenous
inhabitants in the process. It’s a bureaucratic anniversary. The British
flag hoisted up a pole, a stroke of a pen and an entire continent annexed
for the pleasure of King George III, his heirs and successors. I’m not
entirely sure what actual pleasure it brought them, although beating the
French to the claim by a matter of weeks must have been deeply satisfactory
to the mad king and his government.

            The union jack still nestles smugly in one quarter of the
Australian flag. That part of Australia, presumably, that is forever
England. The flag was draped from the top balcony of the pub in Braidwood
this morning. It fluttered on many of the steady stream of cars passing
through town on the way to the coast for the long weekend. Ah, yes, the
great Australian tradition of taking not one day, but three, to celebrate
the founding of a small, far-flung British outpost. It also adorned the
bare backs and shoulders of several young men swaggering through the local
park. The Southern Cross tattooed on their chests and the flag draped over
their backs they wore their narrow vision and empty pride as only young men
can. In such hands the flag stands as a symbol as divisive as it is
unifying.

            Pride. It’s one of the seven deadly sins, you know. There’s
pride, sloth, anger, envy, lust, gluttony and greed. Yet all this week
newspaper columnists and politicians have been encouraging Australians to
be proud, to take pride in being Australian and to be proud of what we
have. Little wonder then that the other six of the seven deadly sins are
seldom far away when pride is tossed around like a footy on the beach, like
a shrimp on the barbie, like a stubbie in an esky. When, I wonder, did
pride sneak across the road from ‘sin’ to ‘virtue’? Taking pride in one’s
nationality seems to me to have resulted in nothing more than an inflated
sense of entitlement and a blind insularity.

            Perhaps if our leaders and those in positions of influence
encouraged more humility in our national identity; more gratitude in what
we have; more modesty in our acknowledgement of nationhood, the result
would be more harmonious. Perhaps also, with more humility and less pride,
the prominence of the other deadly sins might give way to a more peaceful
and inclusive celebration: patriotism without pride.

            It was one of my father’s dearest wishes that the British flag
be removed from the corner of the Australian flag. A World War II veteran
and unswerving patriot, he held no fondness for either the ‘mother country’
or its colonial ties and though a political conservative, he strongly
supported the cause of Australian republicanism. We stopped short of
cutting the union jack out of the Australian flag before we draped it over
his coffin – there are some things at which even I draw the line – but made
mention of his views in the eulogy. An old man who looked to the future of
his country, not the past.

Yet these young people, wearing the flag like a superhero cape and their
pride like armour strut and swagger and mouth the platitudes of patriotism
with no thought to how they came to be here and the painful path of
nation-building that has handed them their opportunities. Pride, it is
said, goes before a fall. For next Australia Day my hope is for more
humility in our observance and less flag-shrouded prerogative without
responsibility. It’s the least we can offer the next generation.


Cheers

Robin