Arrente woman Celeste Liddle believes that fear is winning the day in the Voice referendum discussion and that a process of truth-telling first could have achieved a different result. Pip Hinman and Ruth Heymann report.
Waleed Aly
In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which 50 people were killed, some of the comments from those with a public platform have been breathtakingly offensive.
I’ve often heard it asked, “Is Australia a racist country?” only for the question to be railroaded by a series of semantics: “What does that even mean?”; “How can a country have a collective mindset?”; and “You can’t confer a universal attitude onto a population of 24 million, surely?”
Politicians and commentators tell us there are such things as Australian values. The same quibbling arguments about whether Australia is collectively racist apply to so-called national values.