Academic, journalist and author Julianne Schultz has released the perfect book, at the perfect time. So many of the issues young people are talking about as we hurtle towards the next federal election are tied to Australia’s own identity crisis – equality, injustice, safety and opportunity. How can such serious problems exist in the so-called land of the ‘fair go’?
Schultz’s book The Idea of Australia examines the foundations of the Australian myth – pointing out key moments in the nation’s history that reveal who we really are beneath the ‘happy, hard-working and sunkissed’ stereotype. Not gonna lie, it’s a damning read. But Schultz is optimistic that we can reimagine Australian identity for the better if we make some bold moves right now.
It’s a mission Zee Feed is 100% on board with. We spoke to Schultz about how political leadership has done us dirty in the past 20 years… and how young people can start to fix it.
Crystal: Who do you think most needs to read The Idea of Australia?
Julianne: I was very conscious when I was writing it that I really wanted to connect with younger readers, and people who are trying to grapple with these really big questions, but don’t quite know how to get there because they don’t have enough information or feel a bit cautious about the whole process.
So I’m really hoping that it’s an easy enough read so that it’s accessible to all sorts of different people. I’m hoping it provides the basis for the different conversations that we’ve been a bit reluctant to have.
I’m an example of a young person who has quite a complicated relationship with Australian-ness and Australian identity. I’m not sure if that’s because as I’ve become more aware of the issues as I got older, or if it’s because the country has changed over the past 10-15 years…
I think it’s a disappointing process that’s really gone on over the last 20 to 25 years. What your parents would’ve been at best subjected to was “we’ll tolerate you, but we don’t really wanna know”. It did move to a much more inclusive, “we want you to be comfortable here,” but that ethos, which was actively fostered from the mid-70s through to the mid-90s, has really been pushed back in the last couple of decades.
Partly it’s because of the style of political leadership. We have politicians who are very happy to say “We have the best multicultural country in the world” but don’t actually wanna dig into what that really means for people who are visibly not of an Anglo-Australian background – what that has meant in their lives.
If the leadership doesn’t acknowledge that there’s a problem, it makes you feel more as if there’s something wrong with you, rather than something wrong with the system.
The books points out the tension between the cliched idea of Australian identity and the reality of the country’s history. What’s one of the best examples of that?
Before Federation, women had the vote in South Australia – fully, they could stand for Parliament and everything. In the pre-Federation debate, politicians from SA especially were advocating that women should have full suffrage and that it should be included in the Constitution, but it was deemed by these whiskery blokes who controlled the process that it would be better if we sorted that out after the constitution was drafted and enacted. It took a couple of years after Federation before that legislation was passed to give women the right, but it took away the right to vote of First Nations people who previously had it in some of the states.
So it was a political deal rather than a matter of principles. It gained rights to some, and took them away from others.
These are the cornerstones of the sort of legislation that was passed and enacted in this country. Equal rights for women didn’t become law until the 1980s, Aboriginal people weren’t required to vote until the 1980s. It takes a long time to correct these things. And so it’s not surprising that the memory lingers somewhere in our DNA.
Former publisher of @GriffithReview Professor @JulianneSchultz challenges our notions of what it means to be Australian and asks timely and urgent questions about our national identity.
Read more on #TheIdeaOfAustralia here: https://t.co/t0tGxIpWhD pic.twitter.com/WB0yM6Jw76— Allen & Unwin (@AllenAndUnwin) March 2, 2022
We’re really bad at recognising the compounding effect of how things in the past affect the present…
Aboriginal and Torres Strait island leadership has been fantastically effective in pointing to the impact of intergenerational trauma, which is real and devastating. What those of us in the non-Indigenous communities have been less adept at addressing is the legacy of ‘intergenerational shame’ – knowing the bad things happened, but never really quite facing up to them. And so carry it a bit like a burden that we can’t quite talk about because it is shameful. We’ve seen this in the great advocacy, for instance, by Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins that it is possible to break that power of shame. That can happen at a collective level as well – we can face it in order to undo it, and deal with it.
Do you think the rest of the world still believes in the Australian brand?
In terms of the ‘happy go lucky’? Look, I think it’s pretty tarnished. You don’t get condemned by the United Nations so many times for treatment of refugees, treatment of First Nations people, treatment of the environment without some of that sticking. I think people overseas still want to believe in the good image of Australia as many of us do as well, but it has taken a battering.
Who leads the reimagining of Australia’s identity? Who is shaping who we could become?
The fragmenting of the traditional mainstream media means it’s not gonna come from there. The party system has shrunk in its role for social and political organizing – it’s not nearly as influential as it once was. So we’re are in this strange digital time, seeing it bubbling up from the bottom – and now it’s a matter of amplifying the good, not the evil. There are lots of very good people who are really trying to be imaginative, bold and inclusive and positive. It’s a matter of empowering that group.
I’m sure that the root of it, for people who are angry and feeling left out, is a sense of economic exclusion. Addressing those questions of inequality and being able to conduct your life without being desperately worried about where the next meal is coming from is really fundamental. If people feel excluded by money, they’re gonna get angry. Quite reasonably. If your house has been washed away and you’ve lost all your possessions, what do you do? Well, you’re not gonna be having these sorts of conversations. We really have to address those inequality issues to ensure that everyone has got a chance to be involved in the dynamic conversation about what the future can be.
That’s where a rich society like Australia has got the capacity. We saw it during [the initial pandemic] – when there was concern that homeless people would catch and spread the disease, suddenly it was possible to find places for them to sleep. With people who’d been on unemployment benefits, [with COVID payments] they were in a much better position than six months prior. So we are quite rich enough to be able to make provisions for those who’ve drawn the wrong chip out of the lucky dip that is Australian life. That’s one of the things COVID taught us and we need to keep doing it.
A decent and fair Australia? The solution may lie in the old fashioned notion of community https://t.co/MQsurnDmJ2
— Julianne Schultz (@JulianneSchultz) March 8, 2022
Where do we start? How do we get to a better vision of what it means to be Australian?
If we’re going to thrive in this century, the starting point is in the Uluru Statement. We have to address structurally, an inclusive, constitutional, formal and compensated recognition of First Nations people. That has to be done absolutely as the first priority.
I mean, Jeremy Bentham in 1803 described the failure to sign treaties with First Nations people as an incurable flaw on the colony. That we have still not addressed it in a permanent form in 2022 – it’s a disgrace. So that’s the starting point.
It may seem a long way from Ukraine and China and COVID and all the rest of it, but it is the fundamental flaw at the heart of the nation. My strong sense is we need to do that as a matter of priority, and from that many other things will flow.
What do you want young readers to take away from The Idea of Australia?
There are a few of things. One is in the first epigram of the book – pay attention. Attention is the greatest gift. You really need to pay attention to what’s going on with what’s going on, what’s gone before, and learn from it.
The second is that nations tell each other’s stories just as people tell each other’s stories. We can accommodate lots of different layers, but there’s a sense of a civic belonging – not the angry nationalist stuff, but an inclusive thing about being Australian which can accommodate lots of different forms of identity, belonging, attachment, debate and discussion.
The next thing is to not be afraid of having robust discussions with people you don’t agree with. Not to close it down, but to find ways of having those generous and robust conversation where there’s an exchange of ideas.
And the fourth is another from the epigrams in the beginning of the book. It’s from Rose Scott, a feminist leader who was opposed to the model of Federation that we got. And her rallying cry was to say: “Be bold, be bold, be bold.” Reform is not easy, but it is essential.
The Idea of Australia is available now.
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