Most days during the election campaign, millions of my fellow Sydneysiders and I commute past a big cartoon-yellow billboard for Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots, whose platform declares that “we don’t need to be welcomed to our own country”.
I cycle through a range of emotions while stuck in traffic: despair, anger and finally fatigue. As a Yuwaalaraay woman, I don’t need to be welcomed to my own country; my elders welcome visitors in an act of generosity and respect that is centuries old. This is all so familiar: another election campaign where punching down on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for attention and votes is the default setting.
Palmer also paid for big yellow ads in the media. The same message was plastered across the front page of Nine newspapers and their websites. News.com.au ran the ad the same day a small group including a “known neo-Nazi” were questioned by police for booing the welcome to country at the Melbourne Anzac Day dawn service.
Gunditjmara-Bunurong elder Uncle Mark Brown stayed strong as he spoke over the noise. I hope he felt all his people there in solidarity with him, as he clearly felt the irony of talking about sacrifice, respect and unity in the face of such hate.
Politicians were quick to condemn the booing. It was “deplorable”, an “utter disgrace”, a desecration of a “sacred day” for all Australians, including the generations of Indigenous servicemen and women who fought and died for their country.
Speaking afterwards, Peter Dutton said welcomes to country were “an important part of official ceremonies and should be respected”. Anthony Albanese said it was up to individual organisations to decide whether to open their events with one.
In short: a welcome to country is a modern adaptation of a First Nations practice where visitors would seek and be granted safety and welcome from traditional owners to travel through their country, in exchange respecting traditional protocols and practices. An acknowledgment of country can be offered by anyone and is usually given at the beginning of a meeting, speech or event.
In recent years, and especially since the defeat of the voice referendum, there have been sustained attacks on welcomes to country in the media, politics, and in sport. Sam Newman suggested punters should boo the welcome to country ahead of the 2023 AFL grand final. So, it is disingenuous for politicians on all sides to be shocked and outraged when people decide to turn those words into action, even in the predawn hush of Anzac Day.
By that evening, Wurundjeri elder Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin said she was told by the Melbourne Storm that she was no longer needed to give the welcome to country for their Anzac Day match against the Rabbitohs.
“We were all just dumbfounded,” Aunty Joy told Nine. “We would dearly love to be out there, but they’ve broken our hearts.”
The Storm released a statement blaming the cancellation on a “miscommunication”.
By Sunday night, in the final leaders’ debate before polling day, Dutton had returned to his view – that welcomes to country were dividing the nation, and there is “a sense across the community that it is overdone”.
Today Dutton leaned even further into his welcome to country bashing by claiming that most veterans “don’t want [a welcome to country]” on that day.
Of course we don’t know if that’s the case because we haven’t asked them. But Dutton’s comments show an ignorance of the significant Indigenous contribution to Australia’s defence forces.
Thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women have served in the ADF, and fought in every major conflict from the Boer war to Afghanistan. At least 70 Aboriginal men were stationed on the front lines and in the trenches at Gallipoli. More than 1,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders served in the first world war, though it’s hard to pin down exact numbers because those who signed up to fight for country did so despite the Defence Act preventing people “not substantially of European origin or descent” from enlisting.
Long before this weekend, there has been an absence of Indigenous policy in this election campaign, an extension of the leadership vacuum we have felt since October 2023.
In April, former social justice commissioner Mick Gooda said there is a lack of courage on Indigenous affairs.
“We need people to stick a stake in the ground about where we’re going,” Gooda said.
“Once we know where they stand … we can move forward. But at the moment, we just don’t know.”
Meanwhile, the Age reports, rightwing extremists are considering moves to establish their own political party.
It will be a relief to some when the Trumpet of Patriots’ big yellow billboards are dismantled. I know a few people who’d be happy to help. But the festering resentment over welcomes to country, or indeed any of the rights we as First Nations people have fought for and gained, any of the protocols or acts of respect we have sought to maintain, will remain until we see some strong leadership and action on racism in politics and the media.
Anthony Albanese said the “known neo-Nazi” who booed, the ones who have stalked his and other candidates’ campaigns, are a real threat. We need to take them seriously. But we can’t do that without also addressing the licence they are given by the tone of mainstream political debate.
Lorena Allam is descended from the Gamilaraay and Yuwaalaraay nations of north-western NSW. She is the industry professor of Indigenous media at Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research at the University of Technology, Sydney
