Linda Jaivin on those Oz "values"

Linda Jaivin is a well-known author. In an op-ed piece in the SMH she considers and reflects on those Australian "values" John Howard & Co. have been banging-on about.....

"We hear a lot about Australian values these days. Yet the substance behind the slogan remains more difficult to pin down than a core promise in a non-election year.

Aussie values are an abstraction which normally becomes concrete only when some group - Muslims, refugees, inner-city "elites" - need to be beaten into submission with them. Once the values have served their purpose they revert to being conceptual gas.

As the education minister, Brendan Nelson famously tried to pin the values tail on Simpson's donkey. It appears he wasn't fully aware that Simpson, unarmed angel of Gallipoli, was also an illegal immigrant, army deserter and socialist with a pro-union bent, a lazy streak and food stains on his collar.

There are those of us who may appreciate Simpson even more for all that. But it seems Nelson did get the wrong end of the shtick, if not the donkey. If the guy in charge of education had trouble getting it right, it's not surprising that the rest of us are confused. Or cynical."

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