Monday, January 30, 2006

Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre’s claims are libel.

Tasmanian Governor Will Cox’s Australia Day address focused on the racist actions of a tiny few (I’d venture to say just one isolated, bogan family) in Invermay, Launceston. Cox told Tasmanians to ‘remember’ to be tolerant to refugees and immigrants, and compared the Invermay attack on the Sudanese family to the Cronulla Beach riots. Certainly Launcestonians do not need to be reminded to not act like wankers, nor- for that matter- do Tasmanians more generally.

Cox is clearly not leading the ‘Australia/Tassie is racist’ bandwagon, however, and only another prominent figure to jump into the theme- another happy participant being the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, following the illegal removal of a sign reading ‘Australia Day Yes, let’s celebrate: Murder, Invasion, Rape, Theft’. The TAC claims that the country is becoming ‘openly xenophobic’ under, of course, the Howard Government.

I accept that Aborigines were indeed raped and killed, inter alia, but it’s sad that anyone would need to point out to the Aboriginal community and their self-loathing Western mates that the TAC is wrong. Unless, of course, the Centre can prove the libellous claim that, indeed, each year on the 26th of January, Anglo-Saxon/Celtic Australians collectively celebrate any such offences.

Cox is verging on being a dodo, and the TAC breeds 'em.

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