Pilger’s book
A Secret Country is recommended reading for anybody interested in understanding the the political landscape of that beautiful country. It is recommended reading for all those who empathize with the plight of those Australians who make up the “secret country”.
There’s a particularly poignant part in the book that describes what happened around January 26, 1988, when Australia “celebrated” the 200th anniversary of the British invasion — Australia Day.
Pilger describes how the “original people of Australia” were herded about to be at the celebrations to “play the role of ‘menacing savages.’” He quotes from a speech Jack Patten of the Aborigines Progressive Association addressed to the white nation. I quote from the book:
“You have almost exterminated our people, but there are enough of us remaining to expose the humbug of your claim, as White Australians, to be a civilised, progressive, kindly and humane nation. By your cruelty towards the Aborigines, you stand condemned in the eyes of the civilised world.”
Obviously, the intervening decades have not done enough to undo the injustice meted out to the Aborigines.
It would do journalism good if the focus is kept on the plight of a wronged people than on the either Gillard or her shoe.
