A Maltese immigrant's view on the significance of Australia Day

 

Thank you to the Maltese Community Council of NSW for inviting me, a simple immigrant from the other side of the world to this huge, rich, diverse and plentiful island-continent of Australia, to speak about this important event in the yearly calendar of Australia.

 

I cannot begin this address without acknowledging the Dharug people, the traditional custodians of the land on which we are having this function today, and pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging.

 

The Maltese community is one of 270 extant ancestries in Australia, coming to this land mainly for economic reasons.  The 2021 Census by the Australian Bureau of Statistics identified 35,413 people who were Maltese by birth, the vast majority of them (23,028) arriving in the 2 decades after the 2nd world war, from 1951 to 1970.1  These have around 200,000 descendants.2

 

I think it can be safely said that in general, the Maltese presence in Australia is a huge success story.  Coming from a Maltese, my biased summary of conversations I’ve held with many non-Maltese people is that the Maltese are regarded as hard-working, loyal, friendly and helpful - apart from being loud and opinionated!

 

The hardworking nature of the Maltese is not a myth.  The 2021 Census identifies that 72.2% of 1st generation Maltese own their home outright, as compared to 29% of all immigrants and 32.3% of people born in Australia.  This feat was achieved despite personal, family and household median weekly incomes of the Maltese being about just half those of other immigrants and those born in Australia.

 

Today, the Maltese are well integrated into Australian life and society, and many Maltese are household names:  John Aquilina (politician), Troy Cassar-Daley (singer), Jeff Fenech (boxer), Adam Hills & Shaun Micallef (comedians), Kevin Muscat (footballer), Shane Delia (chef), and I could go on.

 

Of course, we also have our fair share of bad apples.  Who could forget the name of Godwin Grech, who helped bring down Malcolm Turnbull as Leader of the Federal Opposition in 2008?3  I remember spending a week being almost too ashamed to turn up to work, just a couple of years after arriving here in Australia, lest someone might assign to me any guilt by association.

 

The Maltese are well integrated today, though perhaps I should more correctly say that the Maltese are well assimilated.  It seems to me that the Maltese who came to Australia, escaping the poverty of an island in the middle of the Mediterranean that had been almost bombed to oblivion during the Second World War, would do their utmost to reap the benefits of this land of opportunity.  So, as I was told by many 1st generation Maltese today, that when new arrivals were insistently advised by Education officials not to speak Maltese to their children so that the latter would learn English quickly and not be disadvantaged in their education, it didn’t take much convincing for doting parents to reason that Maltese language was the one of the past and English representing the future, and who doesn’t want to give their children the best start in life?

 

Thankfully today, research has shown that multilingual students do quite well at school, better than monolingual ones, thank you very much, with benefits accruing not only in the usual suspects of communications and cultural awareness, but also in mathematics, logic and brain function.4  Delays in child development due to being bilingual, or multilingual, are now accepted to be a myth, and that advice mentioned earlier has thankfully been dropped, not unfortunately before a whole generation of kids had been raised with little interaction in our beloved hybrid language of Semitic origin, except when the parents wanted to say something privately that the kids couldn’t understand.

 

Allegedly.

 

The Maltese started to arrive very soon after that famous date that today is referred to as Australia Day, when Arthur Phillip’s First Fleet landed in Sydney Cove on 26th January 1788 and raised the Union Flag, symbolising the act of Great Britain proclaiming its sovereignty over the new land, then known as New Holland.  

 

Arthur Phillip’s original intention was to establish a penal colony at Botany Bay, based on information provided by James Cook when the latter had explored the coast of what is today New South Wales in 1770.  Upon arrival in Botany Bay around 18-20th January 1788, Phillip realised the location was not suitable, so the next day he travelled further north to Port Jackson, now known as Sydney Harbour, and made landfall at Sydney Cove, today Circular Quay, which was judged much better for its intended use.  He stayed there until 23rd January, when he went back to his fleet which was still anchored off Botany Bay.  He ordered the fleet to move to Sydney Cove, which happened between 25-26th January, not without difficulty and danger caused by high winds and seas.

 

On 26th January, the landing was made and the flag raised.  The colony of New South Wales was proclaimed for King George III a week and a half later, on 7th February 1788.

 

The rest, we could say, is history.  New South Wales was quickly joined by other colonies which upon federation then became constitutional self-governing states (Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia), parts of whose land became self-governing territories by the federation (Australian Capital Territory & Northern Territory), and the rest of the territories are just administered federally (Jervis Bay, Ashmore and Cartier Islands, Australian Antarctic Territory, Christmas Island, Cocos Islands, Coral Sea Islands, Heard Island, McDonald Islands, Norfolk Island).

 

However, I do invite you to reflect: What exactly are we celebrating on Australia Day?  And who is really celebrating on Australia Day?

 

I’ll tell you my own reflections to these questions.  I’ll start with the who, as that in my view is quite easy to understand.

 

The one person who was most delighted with the proclamation of the new colony was doubtlessly the British monarch, King George III.  We should not forget that the landing of Arthur Philip and his First Fleet at Sydney Cove happened barely 12 years after Britain had lost its thirteen colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America during the American Revolutionary War in 1775 and the foundation of the United States of America in July 1776.5

 

Convicts who had been sent to the new colony, and were at some stage pardoned, started to celebrate this day, very understandably.  Later the governor of the first colony of NSW Lachlan Macquarie, also started to celebrate the day, and this became an annual occasion, but it is very clear that the celebrations were being held by British-introduced newcomers to this land.  This has, in my view, set the tone for the celebrations of Australia Day, as one for the British and their representatives first, and other immigrants second.

 

Of course, Australia is still British.  The head of state is the British hereditary monarch, yesterday Queen Elizabeth II, today King Charles III.  The monarch still appoints a governor-general, who appoints the elected prime minister.  The governor-general also appoints administrators who appoint the chief ministers for self-governing territories and the territory governments.

 

The monarch also appoints the governors of the states, who then appoint the premiers of each state and the state governments.

 

So, of course, the governments of the states and territories, successors to the original British colonies, celebrate one of the key initial moments of the British process of claiming this continent, to which the governments have been appointed.  What else would you expect?

 

Economic migrants to this country and their descendents, including the Maltese, have done very well in their millions, achieving a quality of life which they could only dream about in their homeland.  Australia has an advanced economy and way of life, despite some tensions and challenges here and there.  Economic migrants have a lot to celebrate.

 

Refugees have come here, fleeing persecution and terrible wars, and have found, sometimes more and sometimes less, a welcoming hand, a refuge, a secure country where children can be sent to school rather than an underground bunker, and parents can go to work rather than take up arms or go into hiding.  Refugees have a lot to celebrate, when they manage to get a visa that is.

 

The ones conspicuously absent in this mass of celebrations, are the ones on whose traditional land we, ostensibly, pay our respects.  Who is absent?  Well, the aboriginal inhabitants and islanders - the First Nations Peoples, of course.

 

What have they to celebrate?  It is generally accepted by researchers that aboriginal people had been present on the Australian territory for tens of thousands of years, some estimates even of 60,000 years, and here comes a pale-faced upstart in a wig 235 years ago, plants a flag on the ground with a number of colours in the form of a series of super-imposed crosses, claiming ownership on the land on behalf of a monarch on the other side of the world as if the land was completely vacant, a principle that is known as terra nullius, despite knowing very well of pre-existing human inhabitants.

 

Don’t for a moment even think that this principle is just an old mind set.  Just 8 years ago, then Prime Minister Tony Abbott remarked “it’s hard to think that back in 1788 it was nothing but bush”.  Nothing but bush?6

 

It is said that today this land is home to ‘Australians who identify with more than 270 ancestries’7.  Just for a moment, give consideration to the fact that before Europeans came to this land, and there were other countries even before the British came (the earliest being the Dutch and Spanish in 1606, also the French in 1687)8 there are estimated to have already been at least 250 aboriginal language groups, possibly even up to 363.9

 

During the so-called frontier wars, it is claimed 100,000 indigenous Australians died as against 2000 new settlers,10  a ratio of 50:1.  Does that ratio accurately reflect the worth of the settler lives as compared to indigenous ones?

 

The new settlers brought with them, apart from a completely new and alien way of life, a monotheistic religion with a creation story uncannily similar to the creation dreamtime stories of blackfellow Australians. Unfortunately, institutions from this religion, the Christian missions, and others, were the tool by which Australian federal and state governments, having forcibly and legally removed mixed-race aboriginal kids from their families, educated the kids into the new white settlers’ society, with the boys trained as labourers and the girls as domestic servants to participate in the new economy, with use of aboriginal languages, cultures and beliefs forbidden and forgotten, replaced by the enlightened English and Christianity.

 

Little records were taken of this removal, with the result that when this abhorrent 20th century practice was finally stopped, not so long ago in the 1960s and 70s, it was really hard for families to re-connect with their taken children.  Another consequence is that it is unknown exactly how many children made up what we today call the Stolen Generations, with widely-varying estimates of up to 100,000.

 

This disastrous policy has resulted in ‘higher rates of emotional distress, depression, poorer physical health and higher rates of smoking and use of illicit substances, as well as lower educational and employment outcomes’.11

 

Australian governments have belatedly recognised that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are ‘experiencing entrenched disadvantage, political exclusion, intergenerational trauma and ongoing institutional racism’, and have signed a National Agreement with a coalition of peak and member indigenous organisations on Closing the Gap, a process that started in 2008 and is ongoing.  The ‘gaps’ refer to a number of socio-economic measures in which there is a marked difference between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on the one side, and other Australians on the other, for example life expectancy differed in 2015-17 by 8.1 years, people in affordable housing (78.9% as against 92.9%), 23.2 young aboriginal & islander people in detention per 10000 compared to only 1.3 per 10000 non-indigenous young people being there, and the list just goes on - 17 areas in all, being tracked with some areas experiencing higher progress than others.12

 

Could someone explain to me why anybody from an aboriginal or islander ancestry would celebrate the milestone of the Sydney Cove landing of the British First Fleet, given the catastrophic consequences of subsequent colonisation?

 

It is no wonder, to me, that the term Australia Day, with its inherent appeal for national unity, is completely rejected by most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, with alternative names of Invasion Day, Survival Day or Day of Mourning being applied.

 

Can anything be done about this day, which to so many of us, myself included, is the day on which naturalised Australian citizenship was conferred to us, in order to make it more inclusive?

 

Well, for starters, we could stop referring to Australia Day as a day of celebration, but rather as a day of commemoration, of the arrival of the First Fleet.

 

Secondly, we could include in the events, additional commemorations of the main milestones of the nation, and include some truth telling about the oldest living culture of the planet and how this was really impacted by the colonisation initiated by the landing at Sydney Cove.

 

Finally I have to mention that Indigenous delegates from around the country came together in 2017, in a series of talks lead by the Referendum Council commissioned in a rare bipartisan move by the Australian Liberal-National Government and the Labor Opposition, and finally issue in May 2017 the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which calls for constitutional recognition for a First Nations Voice to Parliament (as opposed to a Voice in Parliament), and a process for agreement-making and truth telling about their history.13  

 

The Statement from the Heart was not unanimous, but was close to being so, signed by over 250 indigenous delegates, missing a group of seven delegates who walked out of the process in protest, as the latter’s proposal was to reject constitutional recognition, and rather have a sovereign treaty.14

 

This Statement from the Heart was followed by the final report by the Referendum Council in June 2017.  This recommended that the proposed Voice would be established in the Constitution, with its structure and functions being defined by Parliament, and being very clear it was not to have any veto power.15

 

This Indigenous Voice to Parliament did not get off to a great start unfortunately.  With the ink barely dried on the statement, the outcome was immediately rejected by the cabinet of then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and on the assumption that the proposed Voice to Parliament would ‘inevitably become seen as a third chamber of parliament’, declared it would be ‘neither desirable nor capable of winning acceptance at referendum’.16

 

The sheer effrontery of this sleight of hand, first initiating and sponsoring an extensive consultation process over 6 months among Aboriginal and Islander people, and then rejecting out of hand the result, rather than ask for further clarifications, was breathtaking.

 

Therefore, the third change I would augur in relation to Australia Day has two components:

• •.an earnest hope that we all have it in our hearts to grant what the vast majority of indigenous people’s delegates have asked for in the Uluru Statement from the Heart; 

• •.that this Voice to Parliament, in a spirit of reconciliation and unity and in agreement with First Nations, can be timed to come into effect on Australia Day. 

 

Thank you.

 

 

1https://www.abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/quickstats/2021/3105_AUS, retrieved 15/1/2023

2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_Australians#:~:text=According%20to%20the%202021%20Census,the%20moment%20of%20the%20census., retrieved 15/1/2023

3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin_Grech, retrieved 15/1/2023

4The Benefits of Multilingualism; Western Sydney University - MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development

5https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Colonies, retrieved 16/1/2023

6https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-14/abbot-describes-1778-australia-as-nothing-but-bush/5892608, 16/1/2022

7https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/education/face-facts-cultural-diversity, retrieved 14/1/2023

8https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20210611155701/http://www.australiaonthemap.org.au/landings-list/, retrieved 16/1/2023

9https://anggarrgoon.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/how-many-languages-were-spoken-in-australia/, retrieved 14/1/2023

10https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_frontier_wars, retrieved 16/1/2023

11http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/lookup/4704.0Chapter470Oct%2B2010, retrieved 16/1/2023

12https://www.pc.gov.au/closing-the-gap-data/dashboard, retrieved 16/1/2022

13Uluru Statement from the Heart; 2017; National Constitutional Convention

14https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/we-wont-sell-out-our-mob-delegates-walk-out-of-constitutional-recognition-forum-in-protest/v42y9atu4, retrieved 16/1/2022

15Final Report of the Referendum Council; 30 June 2017; p2 & p36

16https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/oct/26/indigenous-voice-proposal-not-desirable-says-turnbull, retrieved 16/1/2023