Americans got a lot of loaded discourse about race that is intrinsically geared around their experiences of colonialism and slavery. So if you meet an Indigenous Australian, with white skin and blonde/red hair, and they call themselves a blackfulla, don’t come in with that American lense. They are black, i’m black, our darker and lighter family are all black, all Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.
If you’re a white passing indigenous Australian, remember that they literally tried to breed the black out of us. You can’t forget.
• The election is on the first good beach weather day of the year. The election is on the last good beach weather day of the year. There will be no more good days.
• You line up at the local primary school to vote. When you pass through the gates, you realise it’s the primary school you went to as a child, even though you’ve never lived in this area, or any area. Your teacher from Year One tuts disapprovingly, and pushes a blue cloth hat onto your head. “No hat no vote” she hisses.
• A fight breaks out between volunteers from Young Labor and Young Liberals, bedecked in suits of corflute armour. The instigators are dragged out of sight. The Sausage Sizzle will not run out of snags today.
• The fresh-faced AEC worker’s hand shakes as he crosses your name out in the huge book in front of him. He will not meet your eyes.
• The ballot for the Lower House asks you to number all the boxes in order of preference. The ballot for the Upper House is the size of a tarpaulin and asks you, in a terrifying deep voice you can only hear in your mind, to solve an ancient mathematical problem written in cuneiform and runes. The bodies of those who have failed are wrapped in their ballot sheets and piled next to the cardboard voting booths as a warning to others.
• You cast your vote. You cast your vote into the ocean, hoping it will drown. A new electorate forms beneath the waves, ruled by Harold Holt.
• News reports come in of polling booths without sausage sizzles. Riots break out over the country as voters, hungry and disenfranchised, take to the streets to voice their anger.
• Antony Green’s face fills your TV screen. His voices wavers as he begins to speak. Australia has lost the election. All party leaders give their concession speeches one by one. There is no victory for anyone here.
[a low murmur of annoyance. everyone stands up and looks awkwardly into the middle distance as the fanfare plays]
australians all le us rejoice faa we aah young n free. with golden soilnwealth for toil our home is girt (it means surrounded by) by sea aah land abounds in naychars gifts ahv bewdy rich and raiiiir! in histry’s page let every stage advance astraya fair in joyful strainsthenletus sing. advance astraya faiiiirr.
[everyone looks embarassed and sits down as fast as possible]
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Wayne Blair, Indigenous Australian writer, actor and director
