This phrase is now being commonly invoked.  I wonder what core Australian values our Prime Minister had in mind when he said of Australian citizens:

We follow the law and we follow the advice of the authorities.  The government is providing no support for the repatriation of these people or any support whatsoever…

The Prime Minister then said ‘he had nothing but contempt for these Australians’.

In what way do the values that underlie that statement differ from those of Pauline Hanson?

So far as I know, the people for whom our PM feels contempt are Australian citizens.  I am not clear about what is alleged against them or by what law or process our PM feels empowered to level such abuse at them.  If in so acting our PM exemplifies ‘core Australian values’, what are they?

‘Values’ is a tricky notion.  Let us just say that in this context, it exemplifies a state of mind about living as part of the Australian community that we can live with and that we can reasonably require.  (The Compact Oxford English Dictionary has ‘beliefs about what is right and wrong and what is important’.)  I nominate Pat Cummins, the captain of the Australian cricket team, as my exemplar.  Not many others come to mind – from politics, business, sport or religion.

As it seems to me, we have lost all confidence in what used to be called the Establishment.  We are in a way leaderless.  We certainly look and sound spineless.

Well, then, what distinguishes ‘core’ values from the rest? 

This reminds me of the medieval schoolmen asking how many angels dance upon the point of a needle.  Or saying that that although David Warner was fit to play for Australia, he was not fit to be the captain of the Australian team.  People who claim the right or power to discriminate against other people by such subtlety do not command my attention, much less my respect.  I would not want one of them behind me on an Indian tiger hunt. 

We are after all talking about us humans.  Immanuel Kant said that out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.

Well, what is an ‘Australian’ value compared to the French, Danish, German or Canadian values?  Nothing, so far as I can see.  The Germans may come first because their constitution begins with my first precept of civilization (whether arrived at by faith, or through Kant and the Enlightenment): ‘Human dignity shall be inviolable.  To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.’ 

Where does our PM stand on this?

What about the U S?  Well, they have attitudes to the Welfare State, the tolerance of inequality, and the death penalty and the right to life, that are completely alien to us – to put it softly.  And the current administration is the nightmare of the Western world.

China is out of the question because it does not recognize the rule of law.  India is blighted by caste.  But China and India supply so much of our migrant body and are major trading bodies, and the United States is a key ally, so the facts of diplomatic life require us to remain silent or at least be discreet about those differences. 

This accords with our own facts of political life – when money or political power is on the table, or the parties resort to their customary sordidness, the Sermon on the Mount goes clean out the window.  (As it did when the PM expressed his contempt for Australian citizens.)

It is hardly surprising that Australians do not get wound up by their history or their values.  The nation as it stands started off as a British jail and with a grotesque lie about the rights of its true owners. 

You won’t find many statues of white nation builders, and many are very unsettled by what is called ‘Australia Day.’  The British hoisted their flag, which is still part of ours, in 1788.  What we call the French Revolution started in the following year.  The French look in vain for heroes, as do we. 

But the French and the U S, and to a less extent the U K, celebrate the way their history and constitution were settled.  Our constitution is altogether more prosaic in its history and narrowness of vision.  It is contained in a schedule to an Act of the Imperial Parliament. 

Cromwell and Churchill stand outside the British Parliament.  Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln have monuments that dominate Washington.  (We pass over in silence the tomb of the Corsican in Paris.)

We do not have such champions, but are fascinated by flops – Bligh, Burke and Wills, Ned Kelly, Eureka, Gallipoli, Nui Dat, and Afghanistan.  We are big on sporting heroes, but even Phar Lap and Bradman went out quietly.

We may have a taste for mediocrity – we certainly put up with it in our politics.  We are easily frightened off seeing the boats rocked.  We would prefer to see all politics off the front page.  There is a simple enough equation in our politics – ‘There’s not much going for you, but if you leave us alone, and justify our reliance upon government, we will leave you alone.’

In the result, we have lost faith in almost every part of the foundation of the nation.  And my generation is guilty of the most appalling selfishness in making life so much harder for those coming after us to complete their education and buy a home.  We have been parties to sustained selfishness on a disgraceful scale.

That looks to me to be the inevitable result of our subscription to gutless mediocrity.  The Prime Minister and those around him look increasingly like cardboard cut-outs – not even one ‘gossamer colossus’ among them. 

When people in Victoria look at what they are getting from Canberra or Spring Street, they despair.  The two-party system is collapsing before our eyes, and we killed of a humane civil service at least one generation ago.  We surrendered to MyGov and Centrelink, the stuff of nightmares.  We have as much faith in government as we have in Telstra, Foxtel, Qantas, the Commonwealth Bank, and Rupert Murdoch.  What core values might you look for among robots who could swap party platforms without noticing the difference?

Perhaps this bleakness best found expression in Carlyle, The French Revolution, which I am reading for the ninth time.  The French threw over the ancien régime and devised a whole new constitution.  But they just could not make it work.

Was the meaning of our so glorious French Revolution this, and no other, That when Shams and Delusions, long soul-killing had become body-killing, and got the length of Bankruptcy and Inanition, a great People rose, and with one voice, said in the Highest: Shams shall be no more?  …. But, after all, what can poor popular Triumvirates, and fallible august Senators, do?  They can, when the Truth is all too terrible, stick their heads ostrich-like into what sheltering Fallacy is nearest; and wait there, à posteriori.

Politics, shmolotics – there is such a thing as compassion.  It is just that it is not a core Australian value.

Core Australian values

This phrase is now being commonly invoked.  I wonder what core Australian values our Prime Minister had in mind when he said of Australian citizens:

We follow the law and we follow the advice of the authorities.  The government is providing no support for the repatriation of these people or any support whatsoever…

The Prime Minister then said ‘he had nothing but contempt for these Australians’.

In what way do the values that underlie that statement differ from those of Pauline Hanson?

So far as I know, the people for whom our PM feels contempt are Australian citizens.  I am not clear about what is alleged against them or by what law or process our PM feels empowered to level such abuse at them.  If in so acting our PM exemplifies ‘core Australian values’, what are they?

‘Values’ is a tricky notion.  Let us just say that in this context, it exemplifies a state of mind about living as part of the Australian community that we can live with and that we can reasonably require.  (The Compact Oxford English Dictionary has ‘beliefs about what is right and wrong and what is important’.)  I nominate Pat Cummins, the captain of the Australian cricket team, as my exemplar.  Not many others come to mind – from politics, business, sport or religion.

As it seems to me, we have lost all confidence in what used to be called the Establishment.  We are in a way leaderless.  We certainly look and sound spineless.

Well, then, what distinguishes ‘core’ values from the rest? 

This reminds me of the medieval schoolmen asking how many angels dance upon the point of a needle.  Or saying that that although David Warner was fit to play for Australia, he was not fit to be the captain of the Australian team.  People who claim the right or power to discriminate against other people by such subtlety do not command my attention, much less my respect.  I would not want one of them behind me on an Indian tiger hunt. 

We are after all talking about us humans.  Immanuel Kant said that out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.

Well, what is an ‘Australian’ value compared to the French, Danish, German or Canadian values?  Nothing, so far as I can see.  The Germans may come first because their constitution begins with my first precept of civilization (whether arrived at by faith, or through Kant and the Enlightenment): ‘Human dignity shall be inviolable.  To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.’ 

Where does our PM stand on this?

What about the U S?  Well, they have attitudes to the Welfare State, the tolerance of inequality, and the death penalty and the right to life, that are completely alien to us – to put it softly.  And the current administration is the nightmare of the Western world.

China is out of the question because it does not recognize the rule of law.  India is blighted by caste.  But China and India supply so much of our migrant body and are major trading bodies, and the United States is a key ally, so the facts of diplomatic life require us to remain silent or at least be discreet about those differences. 

This accords with our own facts of political life – when money or political power is on the table, or the parties resort to their customary sordidness, the Sermon on the Mount goes clean out the window.  (As it did when the PM expressed his contempt for Australian citizens.)

It is hardly surprising that Australians do not get wound up by their history or their values.  The nation as it stands started off as a British jail and with a grotesque lie about the rights of its true owners. 

You won’t find many statues of white nation builders, and many are very unsettled by what is called ‘Australia Day.’  The British hoisted their flag, which is still part of ours, in 1788.  What we call the French Revolution started in the following year.  The French look in vain for heroes, as do we. 

But the French and the U S, and to a less extent the U K, celebrate the way their history and constitution were settled.  Our constitution is altogether more prosaic in its history and narrowness of vision.  It is contained in a schedule to an Act of the Imperial Parliament. 

Cromwell and Churchill stand outside the British Parliament.  Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln have monuments that dominate Washington.  (We pass over in silence the tomb of the Corsican in Paris.)

We do not have such champions, but are fascinated by flops – Bligh, Burke and Wills, Ned Kelly, Eureka, Gallipoli, Nui Dat, and Afghanistan.  We are big on sporting heroes, but even Phar Lap and Bradman went out quietly.

We may have a taste for mediocrity – we certainly put up with it in our politics.  We are easily frightened off seeing the boats rocked.  We would prefer to see all politics off the front page.  There is a simple enough equation in our politics – ‘There’s not much going for you, but if you leave us alone, and justify our reliance upon government, we will leave you alone.’

In the result, we have lost faith in almost every part of the foundation of the nation.  And my generation is guilty of the most appalling selfishness in making life so much harder for those coming after us to complete their education and buy a home.  We have been parties to sustained selfishness on a disgraceful scale.

That looks to me to be the inevitable result of our subscription to gutless mediocrity.  The Prime Minister and those around him look increasingly like cardboard cut-outs – not even one ‘gossamer colossus’ among them. 

When people in Victoria look at what they are getting from Canberra or Spring Street, they despair.  The two-party system is collapsing before our eyes, and we killed of a humane civil service at least one generation ago.  We surrendered to MyGov and Centrelink, the stuff of nightmares.  We have as much faith in government as we have in Telstra, Foxtel, Qantas, the Commonwealth Bank, and Rupert Murdoch.  What core values might you look for among robots who could swap party platforms without noticing the difference?

Perhaps this bleakness best found expression in Carlyle, The French Revolution, which I am reading for the ninth time.  The French threw over the ancien régime and devised a whole new constitution.  But they just could not make it work.

Was the meaning of our so glorious French Revolution this, and no other, That when Shams and Delusions, long soul-killing had become body-killing, and got the length of Bankruptcy and Inanition, a great People rose, and with one voice, said in the Highest: Shams shall be no more?  …. But, after all, what can poor popular Triumvirates, and fallible august Senators, do?  They can, when the Truth is all too terrible, stick their heads ostrich-like into what sheltering Fallacy is nearest; and wait there, à posteriori.

Politics, shmolotics – there is such a thing as compassion.  It is just that it is not a core Australian value.