Every day under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese I get the uneasy feeling that our democracy is ebbing away — some days incrementally, other days in large strides. But either way, the feeling is both constant and infuriating.
Albanese himself isn’t shy about this. In fact, he goes out of his way to remind us about it.
He did it again yesterday by opening the first session of national parliament since his re-election in May with an extravagant “Welcome to country” from Canberra’s “traditional owners”.
The concept of traditional ownership is not only based on the lie of dispossession. It is also an insult to everyone who can’t milk the traditional ownership system for easy money, which of course is most of us.
While normal people need to work hard to buy even a tiny block of this nation — and as we all know the cost of even one minuscule plot of this country has under Albanese risen beyond the budget of all but the richest public servants and Chinese investors — all these native title holders need to do is be accepted as a member of a mob whose nomadic ancestors supposedly wandered around that area, and hey presto, they can claim traditional ownership.
This empowers them in many cases to stop white people from entering that land. And they can demand instant jobs, billions of dollars in compensation and other benefits from mining companies for the audacity of wanting to extract minerals from beneath that land, the export of which is currently the only thing keeping our spluttering economy from completely grinding to a halt.
To be fair to the Prime Minister, the idea of traditional ownership goes back more than 50 years, and gained considerable traction from the Mabo case 30 years ago. It has gained momentum both as a legal precedent and social phenomenon ever since. But no Prime Minister in our history, not even Gough Whitlam, has been as sympathetic towards this dubious concept as Albanese has.
By supporting the idea of “traditional ownership” so enthusiastically and overtly, Albanese is saying it is fair and reasonable for the British system of laws and legal ownership, which underpins what is left of our prosperity, to coexist with this other system of ownership that is not based on any written laws at all because, well, the traditional owners never wrote anything down, despite 60,000 years of continual inhabitance of the continent.
If you thought Albanese subscribes to this self-loathing nonsense because, like all emotional leftists, it gives him a warm feeling inside, then you haven’t been paying attention, because the real reason is far more sinister than that.
Casting doubt over the legitimacy of British-style land ownership in this country is just the start.
Albanese’s persistent pandering to the Aboriginal lobby is also contrary to the result of the referendum he called three years ago, in which 60 per cent of the nation voted against his proposal to divide the nation by race.
The Australian people spoke more clearly than they have at any election for decades: the vast majority of them disagree that what our indigenous brothers and sisters need right now is more overpaid bureaucrats.
As if to emphasise this point, news broke yesterday that Albanese’s own First Nations Ambassador, who goes by the name of Justin Mohamed, has racked up three-quarters of a million dollars worth of travel expenses in only two years.
None of that bothers Albanese. Yesterday he said Welcomes to Country are a gracious act of generosity from the traditional owners. But surely if there is any generosity being exercised here, it is by the long-suffering taxpayers who finance the grifting of the Aboriginal lobby while still wishing no ill will towards their benighted indigenous brothers and sisters who aren’t well connected enough to ride this exclusive gravy train.
Despite decades of corruption, greed and animosity from the Aboriginal industry, ordinary Australians still wish the government would hurry up and find a way to end the suffering in remote Aboriginal “communities”.
But if Albanese could not care less about the opinion of ordinary Australians, regardless of what implications that has for their democratic rights, then it goes without saying that he could also not care less about the Westminster-style laws of land ownership needing to find ways to co-exist with “traditional owners”, regardless of the cost paid by mining companies or just people who want to walk on what was until last week publicly owned land.
Now, extend that contempt for British-style democratic values to the government’s wider agenda. It will this year start to impose laws that make it illegal to use social media without a digital ID, laws that will almost certainly be used to silence dissent — a flagrant violation of the fundamental principle of free speech.
It is importing millions of low-skilled peasants from Third World countries, many of whom have no intention of contributing to our country, let alone assimilating. They are accelerating our economic and social decline. Labor has opened the floodgates to these people, however, because most of them also just happen to be Labor voters.
And Albanese is shamelessly sidling up to China, a totalitarian regime known to torture and enslave dissidents, which is openly hostile to its neighbours, including us, while blatantly allowing our alliance with the United States, which is at least nominally still a democracy, to falter. (By the way, Trump signed a huge trade deal with Japan today, which in many ways is his way of flipping the bird to China puppet Albanese.)
Australia’s democratic traditions have never looked more fragile. But don’t expect Albanese to care. It’s part of his plan.
