AUSTRALIA DAY 2024

Nations aren’t countries, they are stories.
These are thoughts of Yuval Harai
And The Story of Australia, the one anyone over 35 grew up with, has been torn up.
That story was based upon the sacrifice of those who fought for our freedoms in the great wars.
Great Sacrifices, that most of us willingly sacrificed, almost on a whim, when they threatened to take away our right to go to a pub.
This showed the world that that story of Australia was a myth that most Australians no longer believed in.
Trouble was, when we allowed our fear of covid to sweep away the belief that we were a brave nation, what we were left with was the realisation that the majority of us were self-serving, materialistic cowards.
Now the CEOS of our supermarkets, supported by our Prime Minister, are trying to rewrite the story of our Nation. One, in which we are ashamed of ourselves. And through our silence, we are not only complying with that story, be we are communally agreeing to live by it, and pass the story, in which we acknowledge that fundamentally we are worthless cowards, down to our children, so that they can be cowards too.
And it’s not a story that we will sing the praises of, for when cowards sing about bravery, they mumble, for even they know it’s a lie.
But the story of every nation, is never fixed. And each of us, just by being here, is a writer.
But the ink of your country resides in your heart and your pen is your mouth, and your willingness to speak out and be heard.
And we could start rewriting the story of who we really are today.
So, what do you think the story of our country, of us, should be?
Do you yearn for us to continue writing this story, where, as a community we compliantly proceed to silently shrink into the shame of our ancestors’ shadows.
Or should we rip that up, and start a new page, where, as a new country, we forgive ourselves, and once again strive to write a story in which our country, becomes a beacon of hope and liberty for the world.
A country that after finding itself besieged in a strange cultural war, found the courage to identify the values we wanted for ourselves and the next generations, then as one rose up and cemented those values and freedoms into the foundation of the new novel known as Australia.
A story in which Australians are a brave people, a fair and tolerant people, who encourage their children to follow their dreams. A people who learned the values of liberty, only once we had our freedoms removed.
A people who learned that liberty can always be taken back, by the people and for the people, and that the prize of learning that lesson, is the only victory that will make our country and our people, us, great again.
And it all comes down to one word, choice.
And that choice is,
as an Australian, which I know you know should be a privilege to be,
do you want to be lost in the herd of the passive and disillusioned readers,
or are you ready to stand up and join the writers who are willing to try and rewrite history, a new novel for a new country in which we shine.

Michael Gray Griffith
Café Locked Out