Is there no end to the touchy-touchy, feely-feely apologists?
One of the biggest events during January is the Big Day Out, where top Aussie bands perform in a day-long smorgasbord of music. It is held on or near Australia Day when we are filled with pride for this great nation of ours; when we welcome new citizens, get down to the beach, have barbeques with friends and family. It's our day of celebration.
Yet, as a result of racial and nationalistic unrest, the organisers want to ban the flag from the event! I'm sorry, but WHAT? Worse, Andrew Robb, Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration wants to cancel the whole event and the Returned Services League supports that suggestions.
NSW Premier Morris Iemma (pronounced: Yemma) disagrees: "Our flag ought not to be used to be making political points like this. It is a still an outrageous decision and one that needs to be reversed and reversed immediately."
NSW Opposition Leader, Peter Debnam, is equally pissed off: "The message to the organisers has got to be straightforward: Embrace the Australian flag or move your event off State Government property."
All this came about by a comment by one of the organisers, Ken West, who said that fans' behaviour last year in the wake of the Cronulla riots and the recent ethnic confrontation at the Australian Open tennis tournament had forced his hand. "The Australian flag was being used as gang colours. It was racism disguised as patriotism and I'm not going to tolerate it."
The Australian flag? Used as a symbol of tribalism? Used to identify national pride? Waved about as if to say, "Hey, look at moyee, look at moyee, I'm an Aussie. Like any other nation?
Well. I am shocked. Truly, deeply, shocked that Australians would want to wallow in the nationalistic pride of being an Aussie. That the identifyer everyone uses, be they American, French, British, Hezbollah, Russian, Chilean, North Korean, South African, or whatever, should be described as 'gang colours' and be condemned as being unworthy of unfurling.
Every nation has a gang colour - some are similar, for example, British, America, France, New Zealand, Australia, Russia are red, white and blue. Austria, Canada, Denmark, Switzerland, Japan, Turkey are red and white.
We all stand beneath our own 'colour' and are proud of it; will fight and die under our banner. These people who are spouting apologist rhetoric or merely using this for their political agenda (State election in two months) should get over themselves and stop being so bloody sensitive.
The solution to the drama is simply to have the Big Day Out in a different week, or month even. Not cancel it to stop people bringing gang colours, not banning the National Flag, but postponing the event to another time where it cannot influenced by the celebrations of Australia Day.
Why can't these idiots see that? Must it always be a media beat-up when the flag is at issue? Move on, children, the gang colours are here to stay.
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