Source : the age
The far-right hecklers who disrupted the Welcome to Country ceremonies at Friday morning’s Anzac Day services in Melbourne and Perth were quickly condemned as fringe actors.
But what they shouted – “We don’t need to be welcomed,” according to reports – has become a common refrain. It is repeated with rising frequency in conservative debates about Welcomes to Country on social media, in Sky News segments and even the Senate.
The far-right hecklers who disrupted the Welcome to Country ceremonies at Friday morning’s Anzac Day services in Melbourne and Perth were quickly condemned as fringe actors.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The Coalition stoked this debate earlier this year, when it brought the phrase into mainstream politics by pledging to wind back spending on Welcomes to Country if it formed government.
“Welcomes to Country should be reserved for rare occasions, especially when the taxpayer is being asked to pick up the tab,” the opposition’s Indigenous affairs spokeswoman, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, said in February this year.
Clive Palmer’s $100 million ad blitz has kept the issue alive ahead of next weekend’s election, with banners that declare: “We don’t need to be welcomed to our own country.” The ad ran in metropolitan newspapers on Anzac Day, including this masthead.
Then, on Friday, neo-Nazis agitators hijacked the conversation.
Josh Roose, an academic at Deakin University who specialises in extremism, said it demonstrated the latest tactics of far-right extremists, who are seeking to appropriate “anti-woke” talking points for their own ends as they stage attention-seeking stunts during this year’s election campaign.
“What they’re tending to do is tie their extreme views into a wider backlash from a small but vocal minority on the right, who stand against the Welcome to Country. In so doing, they attempt to cast themselves as standing against woke politics, but what is really behind this is a hate-filled ideology,” Roose said.
The Anzac Day incidents serve as a warning to mainstream political parties, underscoring the risk of fuelling parts of the culture wars when an emboldened far-right movement is ready to pounce.
The Welcome to Country has been performed in modern Australia since the 1970s and springs from ancient Indigenous customs. Elders who perform the ceremony describe it not as a welcome to Australia, but a respectful welcome to tribal lands that Indigenous groups gave each other as they moved across the country in centuries past, akin to a form of border control.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton sought to deny the agitators any impact on Friday. They roundly condemned the disruptions as disgraceful and disrespectful, and reminded Australians of the day’s intention to commemorate soldiers, including Indigenous veterans.
Dutton went a step further. “Welcome to Country is an important part of official ceremonies and it should be respected, and I don’t agree with the booing,” he said. “We have a proud Indigenous heritage in this country, and we should be proud to celebrate it as part of today.”
His move shut down any mainstream momentum the hecklers might have hoped to generate and reinforced a consensus in favour of Welcome to Country ceremonies, despite the Coalition’s prior concerns.
In doing so, Dutton locked out the agitators and set their cause back. It was a powerful lesson on a sombre day.
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