No sooner had this column speculated that Australia was flirting with the US path of division and hatred, than up pops proof of how close we’ve come.
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A nine-year-old girl in Brisbane refused to stand during the national anthem and somehow we know about it, many miles away, as the adults pile on in anger.
Pauline Hanson and Mark Latham joined what he might have once called a conga line of suckholes across the usual conservative media, to say the usual radical things.
How dare she, kick her out, what a brat, etc etc, as if it’s OK to abuse a kid if it’s in the name of patriotism.
When did this madness grip us? Since when do Australian adults froth over how a nine-year-old displays her patriotism, like they’re drunks at the Big Day Out demanding people kiss their flag?
At school in the 80s, I sometimes stood for our (rather boring) anthem, sometimes didn’t. It wasn’t an issue. Same at sporting events; people stayed seated if they felt like it. As far as I know, playing the anthem is still not compulsory at schools, let alone doing any particular thing while it’s on.
Unchained by forced public patriotism, we grew up having a chuckle when the Poms or the Yanks went over the top with it.
But we can be pretty sensitive about it – particularly when it comes to indigenous people. My psychologist mate might say it’s because Australia has some unresolved tensions about our colonial past. Which was the nine-year-old’s point.
It’s not a coincidence that some Australians have become more fervent about patriotism over the same period as the country’s cultural and demographic makeup has shifted, particularly in cities.
Do you think Hanson and Latham are really troubled by a nine-year-old’s ideas? Of course not. But what an opportunity for some grandstanding.
My opinion here is that a school student can do whatever they want during our national anthem, but be respectful.
But my opinion of what a kid does during the anthem doesn’t matter. Nor does yours. Or that of the conga line. She’s nine.
It’s a dangerous route when people are forced to show the right patriotic behaviour at the right time, or risk denunciation. And it’s never been part of my Australia.