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Dark Knight : The Pauline Hanson/ One Nation Phenomenon and it's appearance on the Australian political landscape, came at a time when right wing Nationalist leaders were emerging worldwide, and is often explained as the inevitable consequence of a poorly informed or disenfranchised population seeking to regain some hold over their circumstance. Her statements regarding Aboriginal issues and immigration have been thought by many to be merely the predictable extension of some sort of neo-nazi right-wing rationale; but I think this dangerously underestimates the currency Hanson's message still has within Australian Society and, more sadly, it fails to understand it's cause, and to recognise it's root.
It still remains a relevant concern for Australians because, although Hanson is now an all but spent force in the our political landscape, there are still many within the major political parties who have shamelessly sought to co-opt her constituency by seeking to exploit that same vein of ignorance and prejudice that she mined so effectively.
Whatever else it may signify, the emergence of One Nation was a very revealing chapter in Australian social history. Revealing, as much for what was never said in the flurry of speeches, as for what was. Revealing because, at least on one level, it has been argued by her supporters that the public airing of her highly critical opinions regarding what she calls the 'Aboriginal industry' and their 'politics of guilt' was a triumph of 'free speech' over 'political correctness'.
What is truly ironic, however, is that Pauline Hanson's poor understanding of Australia's indigenous population and, indeed, of her own history represented, not a challenge to political correctness' but, in fact, the devastating proof of it's triumph. Why? Because the underlying attitudes she expressed were actually the result of the deliberate suppression of 'free speech' by a very different generation of politicians and bureaucrats in a previous generation; and by the policies that they covertly or overtly pursued in Australian educational institutions. Let me explain.
As I have wandered around this country in the pursuit of stories, both historical and contemporary, by which to understand our history and our culture, I have been often amazed at the quite detailed descriptions of the massacres of Aboriginal tribes that occurred throughout the length and breadth of Australia. I do not mention these in order to conjure up the 'politically expedient' guilt response, as Hansonists would have us believe that people who refer to these events do. I mention them because I seriously believe that it is our untold stories which are at the heart of our current national dilemma.
That such events took place is no secret. Most of us are generally aware that they did. What I found to be astounding however, was that they were so well documented at the 'local' level; both by various pioneer historical societies and by regional Aboriginal oral history; and yet they were simultaneously so completely unknown at the 'national' level.
I felt as if I had 'stumbled' on these stories. Even the people who related these incidents to me seemed to be unaware of the fact that the next district, the next town, the next state might have an identical story to tell. The manner in which the stories were related suggested that the narrator assumed that I had never heard of Myall Creek, or Apsley Gorge or The Comet River. It was as if he or she somehow instinctively understood that this was not a tale which I had been told. The result is that, within the national psyche, we do not see these stories as part of any narrative pattern; but more as local singularities, aberrations if you like; something far from typical in our history.
There is no shared national consciousness of these events as there is of, say, Kelly's Last Stand at Glenrowan; of Bond's America's Cup victory; of Cook's Landing or of The Storming of the Beachhead at Gallipoli. And the result of this lack of 'common story', is that we have no national way of interpreting these events, much less formulating a shared response to them. And, if Reconciliation is to be possible, then a shared response is precisely what is called for.
Whenever significant national stories are repressed then the national Mythology is impoverished. And by myth I mean those stories which we tell each other to help make sense of the world and, without which, we cannot hope to understand our past or navigate our future. What is truly sad is that it is often within the very stories that we have edited out of history, that the kernel of something, which may well be redemptive for us all, exists. To explain what I mean by that, let me very briefly tell you but one of these 'forgotten' stories.
I think that it may demonstrate both the root of the current backlash; and offer the hope of a way for white Australians to address their history and to move forward.
The Wills Family were a family of pioneers in Central Queensland around the district where my own family had it's history. Despite many warnings from their peers that their sympathetic approach to the tribal groups, whose lands they had settled, was dangerous; they often had 'blackfellers' around the homestead and, by all accounts, supplied foodstuffs when they could. What occurred between the two groups that so infuriated the blacks is unknown. What is known, however, is that several members of the tribe waited till some of the men left and descended on the homestead, murdering the entire family.
The response from the other settler's in the district was swift and predictable. It was also fearfully typical of what occurred throughout the rest of the country. A 'punitive party' was assembled. No serious attempt was made to ascertain the identities of the killers, and, in violation of all white Law, retribution was visited on the whole black population; the entire tribe was driven into a water hole in the Comet River and slaughtered; men, women and children.. Most were shot as they surfaced for air.
One small child managed to escape the cordon and made his way, in grief and terror, to the homestead of another family in the district who were thought to be sympathetic toward the blacks. He was taken in by the landholder's wife and hidden. Several months later, however, it became known that the five year old was being given sanctuary there, and the brother of one of the men who had been murdered in the original incident, rode out to the homestead at a time when he knew that the station's men would be away. When the woman saw the man, who was well known to her, approaching; she sent the the child to hide beneath the bed in her room.
His vengeance was not, however, be denied. Despite her frenzied efforts to prevent him, efforts which I might add, led to her being beaten; the man forced his way into the house with a shotgun and blasted the child to death as he lay huddled and terrified beneath the bed.
White Knight: Oh, Enough!!! What is the point of this dreadful story? Why, all this time later, should we have to be constantly told about such things? We were not personally responsible for those massacres, and it is far too late for anyone to change? Children are not responsible for the sins of their parents. That's an archaic and objectionable idea. This is the 'politics of guilt.' I fed up with it. I refuse to be held responsible for the sins of history. What is the point? Whre are you going with this?
Dark Knight: What is the point? Well, it is this.
If I asked you for the name of that woman; that decent and humane soul who stood, albeit futilely, against the violence of an armed murderer; who risked her life for the life of a small Aboriginal child, you would probably not be able to tell me.
(To Crowd) If I asked most Australians for the name of the man responsible for courageously bringing his overseer to justice after the Myall Creek Massacre near Warialda, an action that led to the first whites ever being hanged for the murder of blacks in this country; you would probably not be able to tell me either. That man became a social pariah, was forced out of the district and returned to England; reviled by society.
You would probably not be able to tell me their names; and you would not be alone. That man and that woman have been erased from our history; as have the many others who stood against the genocide. They are unknown to all but a few local historians who know of their stories. And yet, they are the key to our future and our redemption; because they offer the role models through which white Australians may yet find some sense of pride and heroism in their history.
The problem with history, and the living mythology that nations forge from it, is that, in the end, if you bury your sinners, then you must bury your saints with them. You can't tell the story of their courage and nobility; if you refuse to tell the story of the darkness that surrounded them.
As a child I never heard those stories. The schools I went to, were forbidden to tell them. The right wing 'political correctness' of the 'comfortable fifties and sixties' forbade it . Our sensitivity to our past forbade it. John Howard, Pauline Hanson and their supporters went to the same schools that I did.
The sad truth is that they, and I, and the vast majority of Australians, many of whom now believe themselves to be such staunch opponents of 'political correctness' are, in fact, in our ignorance and loss, the most obvious products of it.
White Knight: I belong here. I chose to be here. My alliegence to Australia is no accident of birth. In many ways I have made a committment to this country that those who were born here will never make. Australians become Australians when they know they belong to this place. It's something an immigrant understands best of all.
Dark Knight: Say what you like but there's precious little community or spirituality here amoung White Australians. They don't belong here and they never will...not until they start showing that they respect the place a lot more than they have in the past, The vast majority of them are pragmatic, utilitarian bastards. If you can't milk it , slaughter it, cut it down or woodchip it.... it's classed as....'useless'.
And that... is just about the worse insult the average Australian can hand out.
Why? Because everything has to 'good for something' here. It's got to be exploitable or it has no right to exist. Values like Beauty, Truth and Heritage have no currency here.
I don't know why I bother with Australians at all anymore. Robert Helpman, Barry Humphries, Germaine Greer and any number of expats found this place intolerable and left and, you know what, they were right. I'm getting out and going to New Zealand or somewhere. Anywhere...where I don't have to feel ashamed of who I am and where I'm from.
Australians don't give a shit about principle, as long as their interest rates are low, their property values are increasing and the trains run on time.
They'll turn a blind eye to anything.... as long as their interests are protected. They're anti-intellectual, anti-artistic, profoundly selfish and spiritually ignorant... and what's worse... They're happy to be like that.
White Knight: That's Garbage. Australians do stand for much, much more than that; and people's personal values, when they live them out, actually do change the world.
But you can't legislate goodness. The People come to cusps in their lives and they make decisions. Those decisions define them. Enough people make the right decisions and it defines a whole community..a whole nation.
I know where you're going with this. You're want to turn your back on Australians and leave because they didn't live up to your impossibly high expectations of them..... and you now using that as an excuse to blind yourself to all the good that is still in them.
Well, explain their response to the tsunami disaster... You're the one that is always quoting that drunk, Lawson, and his Left wing Poems when it suits you. (Patterson was the better poet, I might add, but we'll leave that debate to another time)
Wasn't it Lawson who said that it is "The Hope of Something Better that will save us in the End"?
If you don't look for the good in people; if you don't hope for it....you will always be blind to it...even when it's staring you in the face.
You say Australians don't have any ideals anymore...They do.
Their not starry eyed idealists like you, by any means, but they do have a very clearly defined set of ideals; and those ethics do guide our national life. If we temper them with practical commonsense from time to time....well, that's a national strength not a weakness.
You say we stand for nothing.... I say we stand for this.
White Knight: Look I've got a question...What the hell has happened to you?
You spent the 70's and 80's as some kind of eternal party animal; extolling the virtues of never growing old and, with the exception of that strange delayed 'Schooldaze' excursion with your brothers in the mid eighties, you seemed intent on celebrating life in sheer defiance of age.
Dark Knight: Yes, funny you should mention that. I was having fun. But that was before the 9o's hit and you suddenly morphed into a new age preacher of some description waxing euphoric about the virtues of Australia and her people. Half our crowd left in droves at the time. Remember.
The other half, probably out a misguided loyalty or a bizarre desire to share in your embarrassingly public midlife crisis, decided to share in the illusion or at least come along for the ride as you trotted off to become a hybrid of Banjo Patterson and Clark Kent.
White Knight: Yeah well...We made some real friends along that road! People who supported and encouraged an authentic sense of purpose and idealism in Australians...but, then, just when I'd got everyone to the point where they thought they quite liked us again......THIS!!!
Is it a desire to follow Peter Garret into the Parliament House toilet?...or worse, an innate need to end it all by alienating what remains of our listening audience. Because of I deeply suspect it's the latter. It's an artistic death wish on your part, isn't it?
You're such a strange, sad person. I watched you do this once before, twelve years ago...It's time someone told you that you're not the only person who has ever lost a parent or a brother. You're getting weird...
You even went as far as writing that 80 page treatise on grief and then hiding it in the Interactive so that no one could even find it. You think the Chess Set is about being artistic...I think it's a cry for help!
Dark Knight: Maybe it is. And maybe you need help and you don't even know it. It's not just you that's bi-polar. It's the whole bloody country! There's so much wrong in what we are doing in Australia at the moment and you don't even seem to see it. You don't want to see it. Politically and personally, you're in deep denial.
(They turn their backs on each other. Eventually the White Knight turns back and says in a concilatory voice)
White Knight: Look, isn't there any way back for us? Isn't there any point of common ground at all? This bloody show's gone on for hours and we haven't agreed on a damned thing.
Isn't there something that unites us. Isn't there even one song that we could play together?...
Dark Knight: What would you suggest?
White Knight: What about The Trolley Song?
Dark Knight: (wry smile.) I knew you were gonna say that. Everyone thought that was the space filler on the your album. But I knew what you were doing. It's your Modus Operandi. The macro lesson in the micro story again. You've always got an agenda...(smiles and shakes his head)
It was always the pivotal song for you, wasn't it?
White Knight: (Shrugs) It's song about repairing what's broken...about healing division.
Dark Knight: Yes, but you don't mean it...Now your mob controls The Senate you have no intention of healing anything.....
White Knight: (Deep breath) We could give it a go.
Dark Knight: (pause) O.K. You start.
(DVD: The knights walk together into frame and merge. What remains is one man dressed half in white and half in black... with half a beard Theatre Presentation: Centre Mike)
(Song Begins. Right hand picks and left hand remains down at the side. White Knight begins to sing. Cacophony ensues. White Knight glances stage left; irritated and annoyed.)
White Knight: Well... What? What now?
Dark Knight: (Turns head stage right) Nothin'.. I just wanted to realize that you need me......... and if you really want me to be involved.... you're going to have to start to rebuild some of the bridges you've been burning over the last ten years.
White Knight: (Turns head stage Left) What?
Dark Knight: (Turns head stage right) You better take this on board. Your right hands doing O.K., but in case you haven't noticed .... without the Left....(holds up left hand) ... you haven't got a future. It's never gonna work. You'll be sabotaged at every turn and in the end it's all gonna sound like...shit.....
White Knight: (Turns head stage Left) O.K. O.K. I get the point. Can we play the damn song now?
Dark Knight: (Turns head stage right) Yeah, you get the point, but do you concede?
White Knight: (Turns head stage Left) I can't concede.... not while the weakness that you call compassion places my nation and all it's achieved at such a vast risk.
Do you concede?
Dark Knight: (Turns head stage right) I can't concede; not while you pour vast resources into the military and our schools and our hospitals collapse. I can't concede while the children we promised never to forget languish in Australian Prisons Camps....indefinitely....
White Knight: (Turns head stage Left) Well, have you learnt anything or... has all of this been for nothing?
Dark Knight: (Turns head stage Right) sighs and says introspectively) Well... I guess I've learnt....... that if something of yours is broken it's up to you to fix it.
And...I suppose you've helped me to remember, through all those other songs we wrote....the goodness that existed within the lives of the people we wrote about.
Maybe..... I've learned that if the Spirit of Australia we dreamed of once, is still there, there might yet be hope that we may soften our callous national heart. That might be something worth sticking around to see.
And ...(exhales loudly) as much as I hate to say it.... I think you might, ....and I only say might, have convinced me that there are times when idealism has to be tempered with pragmatism.
White Knight: (Turns head stage Left) Whoa!!!! That's a big statement coming from you.
Dark Knight: (Turns head stage Right belligerent again) Well, what have you learnt?
White Knight: (Turns head stage Left ...thinks) Maybe I've learnt that division is not going to help anyone....
Maybe my side of politics has been overly responsible for promoting division for political gain.
Who knows, I might even start to oppose wedge politics as an election strategy.
I don't know yet... but I do know... that unless we can reach some national consensus on these issues.....the future is pretty bleak for us all.
And.. er.. some of the stuff you've told me about the erosion of our civil liberties has been....Well...let's just say challenging.
....and perhaps it's up to me, more than it is to you to do something about it.
I mean when I think my own side is wrong, perhaps it's up to me to stand up to them and say so.
They're not gonna listen to you. You're never gonna vote for them anyway.. but who knows? They just might listen to the people who do vote for them.
Dark Knight: (Turns head stage Right) We need to listen a bit more to people on the other side of the political divide and I mean really listen instead of just waiting for an opportunity to tell them why they're wrong..
White Knight: (Turns head stage Left) That's not bad..... I might even start listen to Philip Adams occasionally, as well as Alan Jones.
Dark Knight: (Turns head stage Right) And I could listen to Stan Zemanic....
(They look at each other and begin to laugh)
Both: ....Nah there are limits...
White Knight: (Turns head stage Left) And.. I might actually read some of those emails from refugee advocates... before I delete them.
Dark Knight: (Turns head stage Right) Whoa!!!! That's a big statement coming from you.
White Knight: (Turns head stage Left, laughs) You want to play this?
Dark Knight: We could give it a go....
