Australia’s Minister for Indigenous Australians – himself indigenous – has rapped the knuckles of the pampered cry-babies in the NRL who whine about playing the national anthem. Not only are these whingeing ingrates alienating the very people who line their pockets, frankly, they’re crying through their collective arses.
Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt has pre-empted any decision not to play the national anthem at next year’s National Rugby League All Stars game, warning that leaving it out would be divisive and detract from an important celebration of indigenous players.
Mr Wyatt made his view known on Wednesday after The Australian revealed the NRL’s indigenous advisory group had discussed dumping the national anthem from the ceremony for next year’s game featuring indigenous stars of the code.
Of course, sportspeople are not, as a rule, renowned for their mental acumen. But the blatant idiocy of some of the statements made by these overpaid knuckle-draggers cannot be allowed to pass without comment.
Gold Coast NRL club captain Ryan James said Australia had come a long way, but some of the words of the anthem did not “connect to us as people”.
“Some of the lyrics are references to the free and you only have to look back to when my mum was born,” he said.
“She was born indigenous to this land and she wasn’t even born recognised as a person. That is not that long ago — she was born in 1960.”
This is blatantly untrue. James appears to be repeating a common but regularly debunked internet meme.
More to the point, when he talks about “us as people”, whom exactly does he mean? Like most (all?) of the carping “indigenous” players, his ancestry is obviously mixed. That’s fine – after all, most of us have similarly mixed ancestries – but one must question why just one strand of his ancestry apparently trumps all the others. Indeed, this raises the broader point: far from kvetching and rejecting Australia – as represented by its anthem – it might better behove these highly-paid ninnies to acknowledge that they owe everything, for worse and better, to the Australian nation.
Most of them, after all, are of mixed ancestry. That is to say, without white Australia, they wouldn’t even exist.
They are also paid inordinate amounts of money to play a game invented in Britain. So, they should either give up their bellyaching or immediately cease their grasping cultural appropriation.
But the bullshit doesn’t stop with knuckleheaded sportsmen.
On Wednesday, Aboriginal actor and men’s health advocate Ernie Dingo said […]that while he did not object to the playing of the anthem, indigenous people should not be expected to get enthusiastic about it or sing along.
“Once this country includes Aboriginal people in the Constitution I will sing the national anthem, until then I hope you don’t mind if I don’t,” he said.
theaustralian.com.au/nation/anthem-must-be-played-at-nrl-indigenous-game-says-ken-wyatt
This is yet another lie. Aboriginal people are included in the Constitution. That’s what “the people” means. That’s why the anthem chosen in 1984 says “Australians all”.
Like the rest of the racist dissemblers of the “voice” nonsense, what he really means is that he wants an apartheid-style separate inclusion for just one race. Australia rejected such racist nonsense in 1967.