General News
14 May, 2025
Welcome furore
Reconciliation without division must be aim, writes Ken Calder UNFORTUNATELY, we have waited until a neo-Nazis group showed the disrespect for those Australians, who have fought and suffered (and in many cases paid the supreme sacrifice) to keep our...
Reconciliation without divisionmust be aim, writes Ken Calder
UNFORTUNATELY, we have waited until a neo-Nazis group showed the disrespect for those Australians, who have fought and suffered (and in many cases paid the supreme sacrifice) to keep our freedoms safe, to show the way the population feels on this issue of “Welcome to Country”.
The two world wars and many smaller conflicts since have brought out the best of character showing what it is to be truly Australian, united in the desire for those freedoms we cherish.
Most former servicemen and women would take insult to have a welcome to country ceremony at the Shrine of Remembrance on Anzac Day. This is a recently introduced ceremony that is dividing our nation and an insult to all returned soldiers, but more so to all Vietnam Veterans who never received a decent welcome home.
Such a ceremony might have a place when welcoming refugees or a sporting team but often the ceremony (paid for at a high price) is being used to divide our nation and often being performed by people with more foreign heritage than Aboriginal blood running through their veins.
The smoking ceremony is a prime example of something Ernie Dingo recently introduced and now being used as a tool to divide our nation along the lines of race.
As a farmer who still occupies the land granted to my pioneer great-grandfather, who had to clear his land, and bring it into food and fibre production or suffer the Government of the day taking it back, then I claim heritage to that land here in Australia because there were no aboriginals on that land when he was given the grant.
As a former serviceman having been called up for national service then I am appalled that such a ceremony was included in the sacred Anzac Day proceedings because none of my mates were given any sort of welcome home to country by the population because of the political shift in attitude towards the Vietnam War.
Having recently visited the battlefields of France and Belgium where both our family ancestors fought, were badly wounded or died in action then they would turn in their graves to see that the land and its freedoms they fought for are being eroded.
We proudly laid a wreath on behalf of Australian touristsat the nightly Menin gate ceremony and were deeply moved by the many perfectly kept war graves cemeteries dotted across the countryside.
This really makes you appreciate the sacrifice our forebears have made in keeping Australia the best land in the world in which to live.
True those people who were displaced by European settlement suffered and were dispossessed of a way of life they were used to but none of those people (or the perpetrators) are alive and most now have a dual heritage. Reconciliation will not happen by dividing our nation.
Ken Calder is a Loddon Herald reader from Wareek