tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/team-australia-12020/articlesTeam Australia – The Conversation2015-12-10T19:14:08Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/461402015-12-10T19:14:08Z2015-12-10T19:14:08ZFriday essay: a response to the Cronulla riots, ten years on<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105194/original/image-20151210-7467-bketzw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The cultural context in which class, ethnic and racial tensions explode into open violence must be analysed honestly. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Paul Miller</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In mid-December 2005, politicians of all persuasions branded the violent clashes that had just occurred on Sydney’s southern suburbs as “<a href="https://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30043760/halafoff-unaustralianvalues-2006.pdf">un-Australian</a>”. Whether the term was being applied to the racist white thugs who attacked Lebanese beach-goers or to the Chardonnay sippers who defended the “new Australians” right to be there was sometimes not clear.</p>
<p>“Un-Australian” was a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/03/14/1110649126449.html">zeitgeisty linguistic shield</a> a decade ago, successfully wielded by then Prime Minister Howard to fend off accusations that his government insidiously bred divisiveness and enmity among the populace. </p>
<p>(Ousted former Prime Minister Tony Abbott recently tried the same tactics with “<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tony-abbotts-team-australia-entrenches-inequality-20140821-106sdk.html">Team Australia</a>” but found the nation’s love of a sporting metaphor had hit a sticky wicket.)</p>
<p>Following the Cronulla riots, Howard looked us straight in the eye and <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/pm-refuses-to-use-racist-tag/2005/12/12/1134235985480.html">told us</a> that, “I do not accept there is underlying racism in this country”. Howard insisted that people would not “make judgements about Australia on incidents that occur over a period of a few days”. Cronulla was simply an isolated spot fire, a matter of law and temporarily disturbed order.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105191/original/image-20151210-7422-l7fn6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105191/original/image-20151210-7422-l7fn6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105191/original/image-20151210-7422-l7fn6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105191/original/image-20151210-7422-l7fn6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105191/original/image-20151210-7422-l7fn6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105191/original/image-20151210-7422-l7fn6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105191/original/image-20151210-7422-l7fn6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105191/original/image-20151210-7422-l7fn6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard holds a press conference in Sydney, following the 2005 Cronulla riots.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Dean Lewins</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Since 2005, the emergence of the <a href="http://www.reclaim-australia.com/">Reclaim Australia</a> movement and <a href="https://www.partyforfreedom.org.au/">The Party for Freedom</a> (tagline: “Sydney is fun: Cronulla is a riot”), among other outbursts of brute bigotry and unalloyed stupidity, suggests otherwise. </p>
<p>But, of course, violent civilian conflict is not a recent trend. You don’t have to dig very deep into Australia’s past to reveal multiple episodes of riotous behaviour. Some might say that the peasants have always been revolting.</p>
<p>In fact, Australia’s key foundation stories have a narrative arc based on the slow simmering of social tension and anxiety culminating in an explosive release of group hostility. Similarly, some of our most iconic spaces are written over by the language and logic of territorialism, resistance and cruelty.</p>
<p>These events and places are not footnotes to our history; not graffiti on a pristine landscape of harmonious national growth and development. The frontier violence that lies at the dark heart of our colonial beginnings is the first clue that Australians have always drawn lines in the sand with blood.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105184/original/image-20151210-7447-qiww5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105184/original/image-20151210-7447-qiww5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105184/original/image-20151210-7447-qiww5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105184/original/image-20151210-7447-qiww5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105184/original/image-20151210-7447-qiww5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105184/original/image-20151210-7447-qiww5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105184/original/image-20151210-7447-qiww5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105184/original/image-20151210-7447-qiww5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Chairman of the Party for Freedom Nicholas Folkes (centre) is confronted by Shayne Hunter (left) as he arrives at the Supreme Court in Sydney, Friday, Dec 4, 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Joel Carrett</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Perhaps the armed defence of homeland from an invading force is not strictly riotous behaviour. (The Australian War Memorial <a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/australian-war-memorial-should-recognise-revised-aboriginal-death-toll-researcher-20140716-ztqr6.html">doesn’t think it’s military behaviour either</a>, for the record.) It is certainly unlikely that any redcoat or man in blue read the Riot Act before condemning Indigenous Australians to massacre.</p>
<p>But there are plenty of bona fides riots. In March 1804 at Castle Hill, 300 convicts rioted against their captors in the <a href="http://monumentaustralia.org.au/australian_monument/display/22941">Vinegar Hill uprising</a>, otherwise known as the Irish Convict Rebellion. Troops killed nine insurgents and the ringleaders were hanged.</p>
<p>In June 1861 at <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/gold/story.php?storyid=56">Lambing Flat, NSW</a>, 3,000 miners attacked a Chinese camp on the diggings after months of mass protest meetings “for the purpose of taking into consideration whether [the district] is an European gold-field or a Chinese territory”. Tents were burned and the Chinese diggers fled for their lives. The NSW government considered the issue finally settled and restricted Chinese immigration.</p>
<p>The early-closing legislation that ushered in Australia’s infamous “<a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/the-6-oclock-swill-wed-not-have-a-bar-of-it-now-20140111-30ns3.html">six o’clock swill</a>” had its origins during the first world war, as a response to a riot among soldiers. </p>
<p>The Liverpool Riot of 1916, otherwise known as the <a href="http://www.sydneyoutsider.com.au/SydneyOutsider/battle-of-central-station/">Battle of Central Station</a>, saw 15,000 returned Australian soldiers (otherwise known as Anzacs) rampage drunkenly through the streets of Sydney. The soldiers looted shops, commandeered pubs and smashed the windows of stores with foreign sounding names. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105192/original/image-20151210-7431-ynwr73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105192/original/image-20151210-7431-ynwr73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105192/original/image-20151210-7431-ynwr73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105192/original/image-20151210-7431-ynwr73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105192/original/image-20151210-7431-ynwr73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105192/original/image-20151210-7431-ynwr73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105192/original/image-20151210-7431-ynwr73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105192/original/image-20151210-7431-ynwr73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Kalgoorlie after the race riots in 1934.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>In 1934, on Australia Day no less, simmering undercurrents in the Western Australian mining districts erupted in open conflict after a bar room brawl. The <a href="http://museum.wa.gov.au/explore/wa-goldfields/getting-gold/ethnic-riots">Kalgoorlie Boulder race riots</a>, as the episode is conventionally known, began after a young, popular local footballer was knocked down and killed by an Italian barman at the Italian-owned Home from Home Hotel. </p>
<p>What followed, in apparent revenge for a mate’s death, was three days of riotous destruction and looting of hotels, shops and businesses belonging to the Italian and Slav communities. Witnesses reported that the mob “just got out of hand”. At the core of the conflagration lurked the politics of envy (imported European miners earned better wages than their local co-workers) and sensitivity to cultural difference. </p>
<p>One bystander reported that,“our women had to step out of the way when an Italian man walked down the street”. (The Cronulla rioters would use similar logic, claiming to be protecting clean Aussie sheilas from the Lebanese men who said “filthy things” to them at the beach.)</p>
<p>Burning down pubs is so common to the history of Australian political expression that it can almost be called a national pastime. Our most emblematic act of rebellion, the <a href="http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/eureka-stockade">Eureka Stockade</a>, also has its antecedents in the mob attack on a hotel. </p>
<p>In October 1854, a popular young miner was killed by a blow to the head outside Bentley’s Eureka Hotel, on the predominantly Irish-Catholic Eureka lead. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105185/original/image-20151210-7431-kpx6f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105185/original/image-20151210-7431-kpx6f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105185/original/image-20151210-7431-kpx6f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105185/original/image-20151210-7431-kpx6f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105185/original/image-20151210-7431-kpx6f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105185/original/image-20151210-7431-kpx6f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105185/original/image-20151210-7431-kpx6f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105185/original/image-20151210-7431-kpx6f0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Battle of the Eureka Stockade (1834). JB Henderson. Watercolour.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">J. B. Henderson – State Library of NSW. Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The people suspected Bentley, the newly wealthy and well-connected, Irish-Protestant ex-convict publican. When local authorities exonerated Bentley, 5,000 miners converged on the hotel and burnt it to the ground. A subsequent parliamentary inquiry into “the Ballarat riots” found that the incendiary mob included men and women, frustrated at the arbitrary exercise of local justice and the dying hope that the newly appointed Governor Hotham would address miners’ hatred of the iniquitous license fee and lack of access to farming land. </p>
<p>Two months later, Hotham’s law-and-order response to the escalating grievances of the Ballarat population ended in carnage.</p>
<p>In 2004, in the same week as the 150th anniversary of the Eureka rebellion was being commemorated, residents of Palm Island rioted after the death in custody of a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-30/palm-island-riot-footage-shown-to-court-in-class-action-trial/6818074">young Aboriginal man</a>, with chilling echoes of the Redfern riots only ten months earlier. </p>
<p>Both incidents highlighted the “two tribes” mentality that existed between local residents and police in these areas. Informed commentators pointed to the underlying social problems of poverty, unemployment and alcoholism in both communities, problems that successive administrations repeatedly failed to address despite warning signs that intense aggravation was mounting. Blind Freddy, they said, could see it coming.</p>
<p>Riots are not like tsunamis. They do not rise out of nowhere, capriciously assailing all who stand in their way. Riots conform more to the laws of physics than acts of God: pour another teaspoon of liquid into a bowl that has reached its maximum surface tension and the bowl will overflow, no matter whether the last spoonful contained any more bitter medicine than the critical mass below.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105195/original/image-20151210-7422-1pdq6bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105195/original/image-20151210-7422-1pdq6bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105195/original/image-20151210-7422-1pdq6bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105195/original/image-20151210-7422-1pdq6bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105195/original/image-20151210-7422-1pdq6bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105195/original/image-20151210-7422-1pdq6bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105195/original/image-20151210-7422-1pdq6bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105195/original/image-20151210-7422-1pdq6bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A man is chased by an angry crowd at Cronulla beach in Sydney, Sunday, Dec. 11, 2005.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Paul Miller</span></span>
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<p>We might not be able to predict exactly when grievance will spill over into riot, but there are some striking parallels in the episodes here briefly recounted. </p>
<p>Young men. Alcohol. Revenge. Contest over shared terrain, whether between autocrats and democrats, insiders and outsiders, gaolers and inmates. A liminal space – the goldfields, the beach, an island – seemingly ungoverned by the rules of everyday life. The oppressive heat of an Australian summer. The peculiar allure and entertainment of mob activity. A sense of entitlement unfulfilled: golden opportunities, the lucky country, we were here first. </p>
<p>Of course, there are points of difference too. Miners at Eureka were responding to the myriad economic and social cleavages wrought by the rapid change of a gold rush, where convicts would be overnight kings. Residents of Cronulla – the “insular peninsula” – demonstrate a resistance to change, defending their long-held monoculture against a feared invader.</p>
<p>Either way, the lesson is that governments would do better to listen to the word on the street, and act with due diligence and a duty of care to all its citizens, rather than to resort to meaningless jingoism and finger-wagging. </p>
<p>The cultural context in which class, ethnic and racial tensions explode into open violence must be analysed honestly and intelligently, alert to (and alarmed by) the gap between rhetoric and reality, between expectation and delivery.</p>
<p>Australia was never <em>terra nullius</em>. Its streets were never lined with enough gold for all. Boys do not have to be boys.</p>
<p>And clearly, not everyone is relaxed and comfortable, or even optimistic and agile, in our sunny suburbs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46140/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clare Wright receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Australia’s key foundation stories have a narrative arc based on the slow simmering of social tension and anxiety culminating in an explosive release of group hostility. Was Cronulla any different?Clare Wright, Associate Professor in History, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/443652015-07-07T08:11:19Z2015-07-07T08:11:19ZPolitics podcast: Tim Soutphommasane on ‘Team Australia’ and racism<p>Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane sits down with Michelle Grattan to talk about Dawn Fraser’s comments, “Team Australia”, the government’s approach to terrorism and asylum seekers, and much more.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44365/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane talks about Dawn Fraser's comments, "Team Australia", the government's approach to terrorism and asylum seekers, racism in Australia and more.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/312302014-10-01T02:11:49Z2014-10-01T02:11:49ZIs the Australian citizenship test failing ‘Team Australia’?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59701/original/6q3trxkc-1411369848.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Has testing prospective citizens on Australian values increased social cohesion?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Glenn Hunt/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Today, October 1, the Australian citizenship test turns seven. This is the official test that determines if a migrant can become an Australian citizen. It is a good time to evaluate its performance.</p>
<p>The test was introduced in the final days of the Howard government so that migrants and refugees could learn to respect the Australian values that are embedded in the citizenship pledge. It was feared that certain migrants and refugees did not understand Australia’s democratic values and as a result they posed a threat to social cohesion with their own “un-Australian” values. </p>
<p>A multiple-choice, computer-based citizenship test was offered as the solution. </p>
<p>The migrants that I interviewed revealed that when it comes to migrant values, successive governments do not always get it right. Most of the migrants support freedom, democracy and equality. Most of them believe that a test that can “teach” them how to become model Australian citizens. All of them want to achieve belonging in a peaceful Australia. </p>
<p>Where they deviated from official views is that they do not believe that these values are uniquely “Australian”. Many migrants believe that so-called Australian values are really universal human rights and that multiculturalism is the only truly “Australian” value. </p>
<p>Others suggested adding to the <a href="http://www.immi.gov.au/living-in-australia/values/statement/long/">current list</a> of official Australian values. These new values include showing respect for elders, appreciating Australia’s accessible education system and working hard to protect the rights of the Australian worker. Let’s hope that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer heed their advice.</p>
<h2>Are all citizens not equal?</h2>
<p>What these migrant views show is that the Australian citizenship test is succeeding in “teaching” migrants how to become law-abiding citizens who support the Australian way of life. Yet the government’s recent rhetoric suggests otherwise. </p>
<p>Early in August, Prime Minister Tony Abbott urged the Muslim community to join <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-dumps-controversial-changes-to-18c-racial-discrimination-laws-20140805-3d65l.html">Team Australia</a>. Two weeks later, he <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/when-is-a-flag-not-a-terrorist-totem-when-it-flies-for-team-australia-20140818-3dwq0.html">reiterated</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Everyone has got to put this country, its interests, its values and its people first, and you don’t migrate to this country unless you want to join our team. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Abbott was implying that if migrants do not live like “real” Australians, they pose a threat to national security. So after seven years of administering the “Australian values” test, it appears that it has not eased fears that migrant values are un-Australian. </p>
<p>What Abbott’s Team Australia rhetoric ignores is that the values that are prescribed for migrants wanting to become Australian citizens are not always the same values that existing citizens must respect. </p>
<p>The now-defunct repeal of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act is an example of this inequality among old and new citizens. The proposed changes to the legislation contradicted the information on freedom of speech that was included in the citizenship test as an Australian value. The citizenship resource booklet, <a href="http://www.citizenship.gov.au/learn/cit_test/test_resource/_pdf/our-common-bond-2014.pdf">Australian Citizenship: Our Common Bond</a>, states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is against the law to try to make other people hate or act violently towards others because of their culture, ethnicity or background. (page 18)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Had the repeal gone through, migrants and refugees who want to become Australian citizens would have to accept that while they could not hate or act violently towards people who are different, existing Australian citizens, in contrast, would have had <a href="https://theconversation.com/race-act-changes-are-what-you-get-when-you-champion-bigotry-24782">“a right to be bigots”</a>. </p>
<p>Fortunately, the reform was scrapped. So once again, new and old citizens must respect the same Australian values. Yet only migrants and refugees have to prove their dedication to and knowledge of them by passing the Australian citizenship test. </p>
<p>Similarly, the recent debate about stripping dual nationals of their Australian citizenship if they fight in overseas wars calls into question the efficacy of the Australian citizenship test. Assuming that some of these dual nationals were conferred with Australian citizenship after having passed the citizenship test, we must then question whether the test has succeeded in preserving social cohesion and national security as it was meant to do.</p>
<h2>It’s not about them, but about us</h2>
<p>If we still need to urge migrants to join our team, what then is the continuing relevance of the Australian citizenship test in a constantly globalising and terror-driven world?</p>
<p>Clearly we don’t need a citizenship test to prove that migrants and refugees can become good citizens. Most of us would concede that a test can’t teach values. But this misses the point.</p>
<p>This is because the Australian citizenship test has never had the migrant as its main stakeholder. It has always been about the “real” Australian people, what Howard affectionately referred to as the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/john-howard-embarrassed-by-failed-wmd-intelligence-on-iraq-20140922-10k5uz.html">mainstream</a> and Abbott has recruited into <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/dont-migrate-unless-you-want-to-join-our-team-abbott-meets-islamic-community/story-fn59niix-1227028006917">Team Australia</a>.</p>
<p>The Australian citizenship test was introduced in 2007 in order to reassure Australians that the Australian way of life could survive in a world dominated by the processes of globalisation and terrorism. Its role was and continues to be to show how the government cares for the national body, that is, for the <a href="http://www.citizenship.gov.au/ceremonies/pledge/">“Australia and its people”</a> of the citizenship pledge.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31230/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maria Chisari does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Today, October 1, the Australian citizenship test turns seven. This is the official test that determines if a migrant can become an Australian citizen. It is a good time to evaluate its performance. The…Maria Chisari, Honorary Post-doctoral Fellow, Transforming Cultures, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/316302014-09-17T20:29:23Z2014-09-17T20:29:23Z‘Team Australia’: a nationalism framed in terms of external threats<p>Tony Abbott’s <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/team-australia-under-one-flag-but-whos-in-the-side-20140818-3dwqv.html">“Team Australia”</a> is a confusing concept. The latest image of Australian nationalism is headed by a staunch monarchist who campaigned against a local head of state. The same <a href="https://theconversation.com/dead-poets-society-meets-team-australia-under-captain-abbott-30852">“captain”</a> recently revived the British system of honours, which were seen as so foreign that even John Howard, hardly a republican, labelled them <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/former-pm-john-howard-says-return-to-knights-and-dames-anachronistic/story-fncynjr2-1226866151031">“anachronistic”.</a></p>
<p>Abbott’s nationalism isn’t about cultural independence or the construction of a distinct Australia. Like Howard in the early 2000s, it’s defined in opposition to a military threat, not an overbearing Britain or United States. </p>
<p>The language of Team Australia reflects the Abbott government’s pivot from domestic to foreign policy. The military <a href="https://theconversation.com/obamas-new-strategy-still-misses-islamic-states-weakest-link-31506">success of Islamic State</a> in Iraq - and the small number of Australians joining its crusade - has put the question of national loyalty back at the centre of politics.</p>
<p>But if Abbott is now trying to own it, Australian nationalism hasn’t always been the natural home of conservatives.</p>
<h2>Nationalists once came from the left</h2>
<p>In the 19th century, the nationalist tradition was much more likely to be associated with the radical and republican left. Henry Lawson, a poet who flirted with socialism, defined nationalism in opposition to a Britain that belonged to “the lord and the Queen”. He described this as a choice between “<a href="http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-song-of-the-republic/">the old dead tree and the young tree green</a>”. Lawson’s mother Louisa, a republican and early feminist, wrote poems with the chorus “<a href="http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/lawson-louisa/australia-0016017">Australia forever!</a>”.</p>
<p>Revolving around the popular Bulletin magazine, this brand of nationalism emphasised <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/8482548">cultural independence and egalitarianism</a>. Its obvious downside was that, because it valued isolation, it tended towards an ugly form of <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books/about/A_New_Britannia.html?id=eJy4y4X92kYC">racism</a>. For years, The <a href="http://www.federationstory.com/the-bulletin-magazine-first-published-in-sydney/">Bulletin’s motto</a> was “Australia for the white man”.</p>
<h2>Nationalism as a loyalty test</h2>
<p>During World War I, Australian nationalism took a different, sectarian turn. Prime minister Billy Hughes <a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.5263/labourhistory.103.0145?uid=3737536&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104632849527">accused opponents</a> of conscription of variously being German sympathisers, Irish republicans and industrial revolutionaries. Nationalism was now defined as unquestioning loyalty to a country under military threat.</p>
<p>Under the leadership of Archbishop Daniel Mannix, Irish Catholics were particularly suspect. William Holman, a Labor premier who supported conscription, <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Against_the_Tide.html?id=FCgxAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">later admitted</a> that this was Hughes’ deliberate attempt to harness anti-Catholic sentiment. </p>
<p>Hughes’ nationalism was very different to the one expressed by the Lawsons. It valued loyalty, not independence, and feared military vulnerability, not imperial influence. It defended Britain, it didn’t rebel against it. </p>
<p>The Cold War revived this style of nationalism. <a href="http://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1951-robert-menzies">Robert Menzies claimed</a> that Australia must prepare for World War III against the “communist forces of the world”. With the Liberal Party attempting to ban the Communist Party following industrial unrest in the late 1940s, patriotism was defined as a commitment to liberal capitalism. </p>
<p>Those who didn’t toe the line were accused of treachery. The Sydney Morning Herald <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8497.1996.tb01364.x/abstract;jsessionid=3D2D7B90F51A3BDD2C136EE492B9A776.f02t02?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false">argued that</a> “any Australian born in this country who embraces Communism is a traitor - there is no half-way”. H.V. Evatt, the Labor leader who opposed the bill, was deemed insufficiently loyal. Harold Holt <a href="http://evatt.org.au/papers/what-would-evatt-do.html">described him</a> as “the most notable defender of Communism in Australia”.</p>
<h2>A ‘new nationalism’ emerges</h2>
<p>Australian nationalism again reversed in the 1960s and 1970s. As Britain removed its military from Asia and attempted to <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/legislativescrutiny/parliament-and-europe/overview/britain-and-eec-to-single-european-act/">join the European Economic Community</a>, Australians again looked to their own independent identity. This was known as the <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/items/9780522856453">“new nationalism”</a>.</p>
<p>Gough Whitlam embraced the term. <a href="http://pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/browse.php?did=3092">According to Whitlam</a>, the new nationalism meant “self-confidence, maturity, originality and independence of mind”.</p>
<p>In its first year in government, Labor dumped God Save the Queen as the country’s anthem. Whitlam went to Britain to remove the Privy Council as the last court of state legal appeal. He considered it “humiliating” that a foreign body had the final say over Australian laws. </p>
<p>While embraced by progressives intellectuals, the “new nationalism” wasn’t the sole domain of the left. John Gorton was also an enthusiast. The Liberal prime minister shocked Alexander Downer senior when, while driving through London, he described England as a <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?id=WTl_m5Jr-kYC&pg=RA2-PT48&lpg=RA2-PT48&dq=foreign+country+gorton+downer&source=bl&ots=Hg7Mha99XT&sig=8kPb5_8vifGv42EgAeHbgXMD6Q8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YaIXVLC4ItHmuQSplIKwAg&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=foreign%20country%20gorton%20downer&f=false">“foreign country”</a>. We owe the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_McKenzie">Barry McKenzie movies</a> to Gorton’s funding of Australian film.</p>
<h2>Back to wartime nationalism</h2>
<p>Abbott’s “Team Australia” fits into the nationalist tradition of World War I and the 1950s. It also follows Howard’s approach to nation. Howard wanted to quash the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/as-we-remember-old-battles-advance-australia-where-20140124-31e2r.html">“perpetual seminar”</a> on national identity, which he associated with Paul Keating’s republicanism. </p>
<p>Progressive nationalism still lingers in the Australian left, though the republican movement currently lacks vitality. Philosopher and Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane has written about <a href="http://www.soutphommasane.com.au/home/book">“reclaiming patriotism”</a>. But many progressives now see nationalism as opposing universalism and defending war and cruelty. After Tony Abbott announced “Team Australia”, Twitter users responded with the #TeamHumanity hashtag.</p>
<p>It’s sometimes said that the prime minister has the second most important job in the country - just after the Australian cricket captain. Where does that leave the captain of “Team Australia”? With Abbott increasingly emphasising his own brand of Australian nationalism, we’ll soon see.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31630/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shaun Crowe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tony Abbott’s “Team Australia” is a confusing concept. The latest image of Australian nationalism is headed by a staunch monarchist who campaigned against a local head of state. The same “captain” recently…Shaun Crowe, Research Manager and Doctoral Candidate, Centre for the Study of Australian Politics, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/308522014-08-25T20:47:10Z2014-08-25T20:47:10ZDead Poets Society meets Team Australia under captain Abbott<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/57223/original/mkbx9r7y-1408926333.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There is little doubt that Tony Abbott – the pugilist, rugby player and ironman – has sport in mind when he describes Australia as a team.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Julian Smith</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australia’s prime minister Tony Abbott is uncommonly fond of sport metaphors, not least when addressing the domestic terror threat. His latest championing of <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/prime-minister-tony-abbott-goes-to-bat-in-recruiting-muslims-for-team-australia-20140822-1078v1.html">“Team Australia”</a> in trying to sell his government’s proposed national security reforms symbolically turns Australia into a giant dressing room and stadium. </p>
<p>Presiding over the nation as team captain, Abbott assumes the mantle of unassailable Bradmanesque hero rather than a Shakespearean “scurvy politician”.</p>
<p>Abbott recently <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/pm-boasts-about-more-protesters-than-pyne/story-e6frfku9-1227034077189">told</a> the South Australian Liberal Party’s annual general meeting about a Muslim community leader who:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… said to me on Tuesday in Melbourne, in a booming voice full of exuberance, he said: ‘You know we are all part of team Australia’ – and he looked at me and smiled – ‘and you are our captain.’ I have never been more proud and I have never been more exhilarated than to hear that statement.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Captured smilingly receiving applause in the television lights, Abbott resembles nobody more than (the recently deceased) Robin Williams playing school teacher John Keating in the famous “O Captain! My Captain!” scene from the 1989 film Dead Poets Society.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vdXhWS7lLvs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Beloved by Abbott’s ideological fellow traveller Alan Jones – a former teacher and sports coach and now prominent radio broadcaster – Dead Poets Society’s stirring tale of a maverick teacher in an elite private all-male school chimes well both with their biographies and mutual idealisation of the beloved “captain”.</p>
<p>It is a view of the world shared by another prominent conservative, former prime minister John Howard, who once <a href="https://www.radioinfo.com.au/news/pm-howard-chats-zemanek-his-last-show-audio">ruefully observed</a> to another right-wing radio man, the late Stan Zemanek, that the most important job in the country was really that of Australian men’s cricket captain. </p>
<p>Not all teams are of a sporting nature. But there is little doubt that Abbott the pugilist, rugby player and ironman has sport in mind when he describes Australia as a team.</p>
<p>This is a familiar populist gambit. Nations are hard to capture, and sporting teams routinely represent them under the flag when pitted against other nations. As the late historian Eric Hobsbawm <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/european-history-after-1450/nations-and-nationalism-1780-programme-myth-reality-2nd-edition">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What has made sport so uniquely effective a medium for inculcating national feelings, at all events for males, is the ease with which even the least political or public individuals can identify with the nation as symbolised by young persons excelling at what practically every man wants, or at one time in his life has wanted, to be good at. The imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of 11 named people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hobsbawm had an association football team in mind. However, this specific mix of inherited Britishness and masculinity simultaneously sits comfortably with Abbott. It also explains why those who are not the sons of migrant English dentists might feel uneasy about Team Australia’s formation, tactics and philosophy.</p>
<p>Team talk is especially potent in times of war. George Orwell’s <a href="http://orwell.ru/library/articles/spirit/english/e_spirit">pithy summation</a> of sport as “war minus the shooting” is often wheeled out in debates about the routine connection between militarism and physical games. The transparent intention of evoking Team Australia is to encourage the kind of collective purpose and identity evident when the Australian cricket or Olympic teams are “doing battle” as if – as is the case with war – their very lives depended on it.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/57224/original/zpg6fnq6-1408928801.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/57224/original/zpg6fnq6-1408928801.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57224/original/zpg6fnq6-1408928801.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57224/original/zpg6fnq6-1408928801.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57224/original/zpg6fnq6-1408928801.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57224/original/zpg6fnq6-1408928801.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57224/original/zpg6fnq6-1408928801.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tony Abbott is happy to deploy the language of sport for political ends.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Stefan Postles</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But to imagine a sporting team as a country is to confuse a condensed, crafted representation with the nation itself. This is a standard rhetorical move in sport commentary but it is misleading for a number of reasons.</p>
<p>Nations are diverse, sprawling entities comprised of citizens with widely different experiences, motivations and values. Sport team participants, by contrast, have a very limited common purpose, obeying artificially imposed rules for fun, fitness and profit. Citizens elect their captains as their representatives, while sporting teams and their captains are selected by powerful individuals or committees. </p>
<p>Except at school (more shades of Dead Poets Society here), participation and spectatorship in sport are voluntary activities. Few people – including migrants and, especially, refugees – can easily opt in or out of citizenship. </p>
<p>In other words, Team Australia is mainly fantasy. Like all fantasies it may have its uses, but it is also vulnerable to over-reach and abuse.</p>
<p>When he was elected after several years of attritional political conflict that plainly left many in the electorate <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-11/poll-data-reveals-waning-interest-in-politics/5662568">disillusioned with the political process</a>, Abbott represented sport as a blessed relief from politics. He <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-nation-decides-and-sport-is-the-winner-18268">declared</a> on breakfast television that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Happy is the country which is more interested in sport than in politics.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Less than a year later, in seeking more state power over the citizenry, Abbott is happy to deploy the language of sport for political ends. But the proud captain should beware of hubris.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the support of many of his pupils, Dead Poets Society’s “captain” John Keating was still sacked. More poignantly, Keating’s rallying poem “O Captain! My Captain!” was Walt Whitman’s <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174742">elegy</a> for Abraham Lincoln. Despite the poem’s imprecation, “O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up – for you the flag is flung – for you the bugle trills”, it did not end well for Team America.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30852/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Rowe currently receives funding from the Australian Research Council for the Discovery Projects 'A Nation of "Good Sports"? Cultural Citizenship and Sport in Contemporary Australia' (DP130104502) and 'Australian Cultural Fields: National and Transnational Dynamics' (DP140101970), and for the Linkage Project 'Recalibrating Culture: Production, Consumption, Policy' (LP130100253).</span></em></p>Australia’s prime minister Tony Abbott is uncommonly fond of sport metaphors, not least when addressing the domestic terror threat. His latest championing of “Team Australia” in trying to sell his government’s…David Rowe, Professor of Cultural Research, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.