What is Worthy of Celebration on the Australia Day, 2012?

For full version with pictures and photos, please click the following link: -
http://cuqldfreeblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/what-is-worthy-of-celebration-on.html

As Australian Chinese, it seems we are still in the celebration mood on the Australia day that is just three days after the Chinese New Year. We have the reason to feel proud of ourselves as Chinese. Almost all political leaders, like Mayors, Premiers and all the political heavy weights all conveyed Chinese New Year greetings to the Chinese Community, most even were in shabby Chinese. Any sensible minded Chinese should however be aware that these sorts of goodwill are somehow driven by the voting power of the Chinese Speaking Community which accounts for about 3.6 % of the voting population, the number one ethnic group other than English in Australia.
In the meantime, the renowned and forthright brain surgeon Dr Charlie Teo originally from Malaysia has alerted us lately that racism has never gone away in Australia. Dr. Teo said, “It’s very difficult for people who aren’t of Asian appearance to say that there’s no anti-Asian sentiment.” Neo-Pauline Hansonism or pseudo Pauline Hansonism still prevails. But he also stressed that it is not only white Australians who are racists. Immigrants from all over the world all have taken part knowingly or unconsciously to ignore the rights of the indigenous people of this great Southern Land. Before this is mended aright, we have nothing to celebrate on this so called Australian day which has long been regarded as the invasion of foreign culture to the peace loving life style and culture of the Aborigine people.
Ex-PM Kevin Rudd has made a good start by making an official apology to the Stolen Generation. But the real change has only just started, and I agree with Dr Paul Williams of the Griffith University that constitutional recognition is the only measure to right the shame of the past to bring genuine equality among ethnicities in this country.
But what foundation should be based to build such equality irrespective of race. Constitutionally, we can adopt the recommendation of the Panel of Constitutional Right for Indigenous People that Section 25 and 51 (xxvi) of the Australian Constitution – arcane clauses that still refer to “race” – be deleted. Then there are proposed clauses s51A and s127A which would acknowledge indigenous people as Australia’s first occupants, as well as the inherent value of indigenous languages and culture.
While respecting the indigenous people’s value as much as all other values and cultures of immigrants, we do need to establish a set of common Australian values that would help people of all ethnicities to jell together as one like the Song we sing “We are one but we are many”.
Because of the cultural diversity, the common values should transcend culture.Actually, I think we do have these values spelled out already in the book of “Becoming An Australian Citizen”. It can be summed up in five inter-related aspects:
-1) Freedom (human rights protection),
2) Law abiding (Parliamentary Democratic System),
3) Equality (Anti-discrimination),
4) A Fair Go (Compassion for the marginalized people group)
5) Mateship (Volunteerism).
In a multicultural society with immigrants bringing along their cultural baggage to come to live in Australia, everyone should have the freedom of choice to live their preferred cultural life style in their own local community. But in the melting pot, when we are together, either at work place, or in socialized occasions, we speak or try to speak the same language, which is English. Other than that, we don’t impose or enforce our own belief, customs hobby to people of other cultures. We just exercise mutual respect and mutual tolerance to others’ culture. No one ethnicity, social class, religion is superior than others. On this basis, we really don’t need a so called main stream Australian cultures, which are mainly Anglo-Saxon based white Australian cultures.
Everyone should have the freedom of speech and freedom of expression to voice out their opinion, even opposing ideas. All voices needed to be heard and must be protected by the law as long as they are made law-abiding without defamation or mudslinging false accusation. So freedom is the expression of supremacy of upholding one’s basic human rights.
Freedom does not come free without the restraint by law. The freedom to choose your own cultural way of living must all be law abiding. All behaviours infringing the freedom of others and causing disharmony or even endangering to the society must be outlawed.
As Australian, we also support for parliamentary democracy and the rule of law. Australians recognize the value of laws as rules of conduct that are established by elected governments and followed by the community to maintain an orderly and free society. Everyone is protected by the rule of laws only if everyone all obeys laws. No one is above the laws because of their power. I am most delighted to learn today that the Crime and Misconduct Commission has launched a criminal investigation on the UQ Scandal of granting enrolment to unqualified relative of the Vice-Chancellor and the subsequent persistent cover up by UQ.
In front of Laws, everyone is equal irrespective of race, sex, wealth, social status, religion and born disability. It could best be in the form of mutual respect and acceptance of our differences.
Under the spirit of freedom, law-abiding and equality, everyone should be given a fair go to achieve their dream, especially the marginalized weaker community. A typical example is the need to show compassion to the asylum seekers. It is a shame that the refugees and asylum seekers have been politicized by incorrect and incomplete representation of their genuine status of survivors rather than as queue jumpers.
Last but not the least is mateship. It is exemplified in the form of volunteerism that at time of needs, we would play a good Samaritan. In the same token, when we are the one who needs help, we also should be open up willingly for helps by others. The best demonstration of this is the Queensland last flood, when army of volunteers turned up with their own gears to be assigned wherever the needs were.
We have seen mixed results how those Australian values infiltrate our society. We have successful testimony but in general we still find both the government and the oppositions have put their parties’ interests ahead of the country’s interest. The opposition leader is especially disappointing always showing his ignorance and insensitivity if not arrogance to the marginalized people group. Just in shorter than 6 days, the opposition leader has made two slip up causing himself, his party as well as the Australian country great embarrassment in two incidents, one international and the other national. He joked about the grounding of the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia disaster, saying: "Well, that was one boat that did get stopped. He thought he was smart enough to use this opportunity to attack the boat people policy of the ALP, yet it was unanimously regarded as a lack of judgment and compassion when you have 11 people that were dead and at least 20 people missing and he was using this tragedy to make a tasteless joke. It shows he is unfit to be leader.
Then just today, on the Australia day, his insensitive comment on the indigenous people’s tent embassy outside of the Canberra Parliament showing his disrespect to their right to protest against the Australia Day as Invasion Day. It incited a most ugly protest scene forcing both the PM and the opposition leader to run for their lives from the angry mob surrounding the restaurant they were holding official functions. Of course we condemn violence in any peaceful demonstration. The 40 year history of tent embassy is peaceful and lawful. The riot around the Canberra restaurant is a shame that should never ever happen again.
Even if we have a good political system and a fair set of common values, but the characters of our politicians setting bad examples for their followers would be big problems for Australia as a whole.
As a matter of facts, we have reasons to worry about the general moral level of Australian people. According to an article in the February, 2010 edition of Focus, a UK magazine produced by the BBC, it used a ten point system to gauge the probability of all countries to commit the seven deadly sins:- lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. And the people Down Under was ranked first for envy and third for lust and third for gluttony. It places them number 1 in the world to have the most tendency to commit the seven deadly biblical sins beating America, Canada, Sweden and Spain. And, topping each of the sin categories were South Korea (lust), the US (gluttony), Mexico (greed), Iceland (sloth and pride), South Africa (wrath) and Australia (envy).
As a member of this country, we have to cop it on the chin accepting this shameful fact collectively and move on. Perhaps the fact that the Australia Day was the date of arrival of the first Fleets of convicts from Britain is still a worthwhile reminder for the descendents of this new born young nation to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our creator. When true harmony and reconciliation can be reached amongst all ethnicities on genuine equal terms, then it may be time for us to look for a different occasion and different date to celebrate Australia Day rather than a log book day of the first Fleet bearing such an unforgettable stain on the soul of the great Australian people throughout our young history.