I’ll tell you, dear reader, from the outset what Oz Day means to me these days. I think it makes a great long weekend when the day itself falls within the calendar correctly. 2017 is not a good example. Thursday for fuck sake!!! A whole lot of people will be either chucking sickies or legitimately taking leave on the Friday, making for a wonderful 4 day long weekend. Employers must really hate this time of year. Oz Day, followed by Easter, then Anzac Day, then May Day followed by Queen’s Birthday at mid year. Shock Horror that the plebs get public holidays!
When Oz Day falls as it does this year, it’s a day away from the rest of humanity. I hate people in the main because people – in the main – only want from you. Okay, that’s the role I’ve chosen as a Driving Instructor, but that doesn’t mean I have to be enraptured by the experience. There are days when I’d rather not get out of bed for fear of just what lies before me during the day. So I look forward to days away from humanity. Oz Day is just one of those days I look forward to.
Apart from that, the day means abasolutely nothing to me. I usually burn the flag, basically because I can. It is not illegal to do so, and to me the flag is simply a collection of coloured cloth which together represents the colonial origins of this nation. Australia today owes absolutely nothing to the United Kingdom. We are a progessive nation state, standing quite comfortably thank you very much, on our own half a world away and several hundred years distant in time from class-ridden Great Britain.
To my mind, Australia needs to cast off the shackles of the archaic monarchy of another nation state to which we owe no allegiance. So annually, I burn the flag for which I have no fondness, and which contains the insignia of that arcane monarchy. I do so because I can. Because I feel I am expressing my disdain for the British monarchy and all that it represents. I do so because the sewn together collection of coloured cloth means nothing to me. Hate away, all you red-necked right-wing froot bats, I couldn’t give a cubic root for your faux nationalism. Those of you who wrap yourselves in that collection of coloured cloth, believing yourselves to be genuinely Aussie, as you pour alcohol down your gullet, fill me with despair and disgust. We are better than that. We owe allegiance to no-one, no other nation state, no other monarchy. What you wrap yourself in is not representative of who you are. It most certainly does not represent me.
Tomorrow I will front a video camera and put voice to some thoughts about the current times, as I do every Oz Day. Those thoughts are MY thoughts and frankly, I couldn’t care less who feels aggrieved, or who feels empathy with my expression. What I do, what I say, is what I feel and no-one can deny that expression. THAT, is true democracy, and does not depend on loving a collection of coloured cloth.