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Bob Ellis has some hard words to say about Prime Minister Julia Gillard about her attitudes towards race.
By Bob Ellis
THREE soldiers in a ten-year war die by gunfire and it is like a ‘physical blow’ to a nation. Forty children hoping to join that nation die by drowning and there is no sorrow spoken by its prime minister, Julia Gillard. Just as there was no sorrow spoken by her after the drownings off Christmas Island, no names of the dead, no apology, no prayer for the bereaved.
Is the Prime Minister a racist?
Well, she looks like one. She sounds like one.
If a hundred brown-skinned corpses wrench no word of kindness from her and five white-skinned casualties of long stupid war she greets like an unbelievable calamity, these numbers, these numbers alone, suggest she looks like one, and sounds like one; looks, indeed, like that worst kind of racist, an unconscious one, the kind that thinks she is just being scientific, and ‘these people’ should go back to the village where their uncle was beheaded and seek work there and not risk big seas on their way to a civilised life in Melbourne or Sydney. Her phrase ‘a better sort of migrant’ (meaning me, not Roquia Bakhtiyari) speaks volumes, as does her lack of an African or Aboriginal close friend in Melbourne or Adelaide, towns teeming with them, in forty-five years of making friends in Australia.
Is Julia Gillard a racist? She looks like one.
Now it is clear her persistence with the Intervention lost Labor the Indigenous vote last Saturday, she looks like one. She looks like the female hotelier in The Sapphires, disgusted by black girls who sing in competition with white girls, and says, ‘go back to the humpy.’
She may be otherwise, but she looks like one.
(Tomorrow, we will feature a review by Bob of the movie he mentioned here, The Sapphires. You can read more by Bob Ellis on his blog Table Talk.)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
30 Comments
What an absolute load of racist rubbish you have written Ellis you want to have a good look at yourself.
I can say my Prime Minister of Australia is not racist as you have accused her.
Your a disgrace the PM was trying to actually help Aboriginal people.
I don’t disagree very often with you Bob – but your ‘Jullia Gillard and Race’ is absolute tripe.
I’m sure MarilynS will do a thesiis on this??
Are not all resource wars we get involved in racist wars? I don’t witness Australia occupying any white nations. Like Vietnam we’re fine with bombing of nations civillians into submission but not OK with taking refugees from said nations.
It isn’t Gillard as such, it’s the entirety of the political puppetry whom take their foreign policy agenda via offshore memo service. The puppets cry when the memo says cry is all. How the people of OZ feel about war on whatever is irrelevant.
Sorry to say Bob, you are well off the mark here. time to sit down and have a stiff drink. even if it is 9.21am. Or perhaps you have already had one.
love your usual well thought out position but you are going after the wrong person here. I agree with the sentiments but you would also understand that the inherited position and the intransegence of Tony Abbott and his conservative mates has wedged her quite a lot.
I think she is a decent Hard working person, who deserves a bit more respect. I thought I could see the compassion for both sides of the equation.
Who you should be attacking are the conservative bastards who really don’t give a damn.EVEER.
Actually, this is spot on from Bob Ellis. Labor and Liberal are so close on bullying refugees and aborigines, you couldn’t slip a cigarett paper between them.
Well Bob you certainly have fired up a few emotions among readers ….I, for one am glad you were brave enough to write what many Australians, both Indigenous and non- Indigenous; and human rights groups have been wondering since June 29.
Why did the Senate’s rush the passing of new laws extending the intervention in remote Northern Territory areas in a practically empty Senate chamber at 2 am ! This was after 43,000 signatures & a request by the Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights to submit the Legislation to an Independent Human Rights Test. Amnesty International Australia says the law put Australia’s human rights record to shame. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-29/stronger-futures-laws-rushed-through-senate/4100288
Heaven forbid we get some rational/reasonable FACT based opinion or even ‘news’ reporting in Australia these days. Seems USA style ‘post-truth politics’ is the new buzzword in the media echo-chamber. That and sexist smear and innuendo.
Bob Ellis doesn’t want to miss out on the fun…so has joined forces with the other misogynist nutters abroad on the internet and much of our mainstream media.
After all you’re not part of the ‘in crowd’ till you join in with this latest Australian pastime….
Sorry bob, but if it were five dark skinned Aussie soldiers that died, the PMs response would have been exactly the same.
Racist, no, something else perhaps… Nationalist? Xenophobic? Anti-Islam?
Bob, you are right. Consider this: If you are a goldfish in a bowl with other goldfish, you will not know that you are a goldfish. You need to be outside of the bowl to know that the things swimming in the bowl are goldfish.
I have been an outsider (a migrant) for a long time. I know if our fearless leader is a racist or not and I know why most comments say she is not.
I strongly doubt that Gillard is a racist on the personal level. It seems more likely to me that she’s just a populist politician who is telling a (mostly) racist society what it wants to hear.
As the Drive-By Truckers put it in their song Wallace, about the segregation-era Governor of Alabama:
“And if it’s true that he wasn’t a racist
and he just did all them things for the votes
I guess Hell’s just the place for kiss-a** politicians
who pander to a**holes.”
“Australia isn’t a (mostly) racist society”, you say? Two words: 2001 election.
Bob Ellis – back on your old hobby-horse, denigrating Julia Gillard, eh Bob? Couldn’t stand the heat in the Unleashed kitchen, so you are commenting here now? You wrongly accuse our PM of racism (the latest in a myriad other charges including something as inane as being a redhead), while exposing your own blatant prejudice. Your recurring misogynist attacks on our Prime Minister are now so old hat, so passe, so boring, so desperate. Bob, I used to enjoy your writings, now I just feel sorry for you. Move over Alan Jones and Grahame Morris, is there room at the bottom of the barrel for Bob?…
Gillard is a racist, I bet none of you bleaters have ever met the egregiously stupid woman have you?
Bob and I have, I have met with here on a number of occasions and the ignorant unconscious racism is in every pore of her being.
How else do you explain her vicious bullying of refugees from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan in particular.
Or the extra vicious so-called intervention.
Or her complete lack of ever showing any sorrow over dead Afghans or Iraqis, her silence on the war crimes of Sri Lanka while she sends our navy out to train Sri Lanka to stop and jail tamils.
She said in her stupid Lowy speech that only proper migrants like her parents are welcome really and her only idea of a good refugee is one who stays home to die.
That is racist in the extreme and she has always believed that.
She has never made a single speech about not jailing refugee kids, she has had refugees shot with rubber bullets in that hellish prison on Christmas Island and then blamed them.
On the same day she was flogging refugees to the spivs on two corrupt Pacific nations 5 Australian’s were killed in a war we started while Australia again ignored Afghan refugees in the water for almost 2 days where they drowned, she then had them taken illegally off Australian soil and sent to be jailed in Indonesia.
She would not have done that for one white person ever.
It is not just politics with her and it has nothing to do with fucking misogyny as the ALP and some other fools claim, it has to do with the fact that she is a racist.
A leader is supposed to invite our best to stand tall, she invites our worst to stand subsumed in the gutters of racist garbage.
A leader is supposed to uphold our laws, our constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law – she trashes them to arouse race hate against Afghan refugees.
Jason Clare tries on the same filth as Howard did with refugees supposedly threatening staff on a ship if they can’t come here and now merchant ships leave refugees to die.
She appointed Bowen to take race laws to the far far right of Shire politics to scrap with Morrison in the garbage in the gutter.
What sort of leader do you call that?
A racist.
It takes a real racist to want to waste $5 billion to break the law so she can pretend that keeping out a few hundred refugees will make other refugees go away and die rather than stand up and state clearly that we have legal and moral obligations to those who need help.
Sheesh, little partisan hacks, get your heads out of your rectums and have a good look around.
Rhonda calling Bob a misogynist is ridiculous, Bob is the least misognist man I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
it’s so easy for lazy girls to hide behind that stupid claim if they disagree with or uncomfortable with facts isn’t it but this old broad won’t buy into the lie.
It has nothing to do with Gillard being a woman, if she were a man spouting the same racist tripe she would be treated just the same – sort of like many of us treated her hero John Howard.
Is Bob a mysogynist? Well he looks like one and he sounds like one! Tell me I’m wrong.
Marilyn why is it that you always resort to abuse? You refuse to acknowledge that a difference of opinion is legitimate and you are so quick to label any who do not agree with you as racist, and those who do agree with you as the only decent folk left in this country.
I am very happy to agree that this govt. and indeed this PM have made decisions that have disappointed and infuriated me, but I would never ever describe this woman as racist based on the decisions that have been made in relation to asylum seekers. You have no legitamcy to call her a racist because she has not wept over corpses, that is emotive rubbish.You never accepted that anyone who CHOOSES to get on a leaky boat has to accept the consequences of that decision, instead you sheet it all back to those that you choose to demonise as you bury your head in the sand.I’m sick of your ranting diatribes, and poor old bob is sounding more and more like his nemesis alan every day.
Poor Marilyn seems to suffer from Echolalia, Truth Deprivation Syndrome and a distinct lack of intelligent comment.
No rhonda, I am sick to death of silly partisan hacks defending the racist crimes of an ignorant PM just because she is a woman.
I am way too old to tolerate such crap.
@ Marilyn, i don’t like gillard at all but to call her a racist is just stupid. I am a vietnam vet and have been sharfted by this govt like many other in the military family. Her refusal to properly index our pensions the same as other pensioners is elder abuse. There are alot of military ppl and widows that are living under the henderson poverty line but all you care about is your point of view. you should take note of what the younger generation have to say instead of abusing them, you might just learn something. I have been abused most of my life because of ppl like you. I have read your posts on our website about the fairgo campaign and you seem to me to be against anything that you don’t agree too.
I have never said a word about the fairgo campaign, I have no idea what you are talking about.
And why on god’s earth would I listen to brainless younger generations who think that being brutal to innocent people is a great way to go, brats who grew up in Howards facist Australia.
I spent most of my teenage years campaigning against the brutal Vietnam lottery, I have lost friends and since the 1980′s have been trying to get justice for those affected by that stinking illegal war and agent orange in particular.
There is more than one bloody Marilyn in this country and I won’t wear the crap other Marilyn’s might write.
We now have this absurd situation where we are appeasing Indonesia by not charging the Indonesians who crew refugee boats after years of calling them the scum of the earth, but we are going to torture and exile the passengers.
I have lost friends who went to “Nam, for no reason, to fight a war based on a lie.
Why would I support racist wars based on more lies.
No, Bob, you missed the boat!
Marilyn. Please do everyone a favour, post at Crikey. Suzanne Blake and Co. miss you something awful. Your superior insights into your pet subject appears to be not fully appreciated here at IA. I’d personally would be grateful if I didn’t always have to skip your outpourings. Thanks.
Goco, why don’t you ever contribute anything except to abuse me?
I don’t give a rats arse if you would be grateful if I shut up.
@Marilyn s, are you telling me that it was not you posting you usual bullshit on the article, Diggers now fighting for a fairgo. independent australia. june or july? and don’t start telling me about agent orange as i have lived with the damage it has done to me, 2003 bowel cancer, 2012 prostate cancer. I know alot more vets that are being treated for the same conditions. I might not know you but i do know ppl like you i have been subjected to abuse since returning from nam. I have been f*#%k around by experts and you are certainly not one.
Never mind the rantings of Marilyn S John Lawrence, she is just awful to anyone who does not agree with her. I live in the electorate of Eden-Monaro, and of late I have heard my MP speaking about his efforts to facilitate the very measures that you and your comrades are now facing. He has made no secret of the difficulties he is trying to overcome to enable a fair and reasonable outcome.
Shit, I now sound like some sort of spinner on behalf of the govt., but believe me I am not, just a person who has found Mike to be a bloody good local MP, who has tried his best to help me in my situation and I have no reason to doubt that he is truly making every effort to support all you diggers who need help.
Happy for IA to provide my details to you because on a mattter this serious I would not want you to think that I am some sort of troll or govt. bullshit artist.
John Lawrence, I do not know what the fair go campaign is but seriously I have no real interest in current soldiers who were school boys when the attack on Afghanistan started and still joined up after it was lost.
What I care about is the conscripts because they had no choice.
If soldiers choose to join the killing machine that is down to them, just like miners who work in dangerous places or any other person in a dangerous job it is free choice but there is nothing that heroic about it.
Of course I am sickened when injured soldiers are not cared for and I think the pension is ridiculous but just how long do people get to be considered veterans? Surely all so called veterans have other lives beyond the one or two years or so they spend in the army?
No other public servant gets special perks for life like army people do yet most of the time there are no wars to fight.
Obviously the comments at the following links were made by a different Marilyn S.
http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/diggers-now-fighting-for-a-fair-go/#comment-69371
http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/diggers-now-fighting-for-a-fair-go/#comment-69496
http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/diggers-now-fighting-for-a-fair-go/#comment-69691
http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/diggers-now-fighting-for-a-fair-go/#comment-69700
@grumpysumpy, it is the right marilyn s who was on the site no doubt about it.@ bundysmum some of the mps have said that for the last two years but when it comes time to vote on the matter they all tow the party line, that is what makes the current mps all talk and no action. I have seen his letters to some of the guys and it is just the same as all other letters from mps, exactly the same reply word for word. You can put kate lundy in that bracket as well.
Deary me Marilyn, I followed the links provided by grumpy sumpy, and I will bare my bum in the main street of my very conservative country town if it aint you making the comments, all of which I find deeply offensive I might add.
Don’t try to take the high moral ground lady, and then turn out to be a bloody liar when you are confronted with your vile commentary.
John lawrence, Mike Kelly certainly admitted that this process was taking far too long but he was insistant that the need to get this right was part of the delay.I do hope that my faith in the member for Eden-Monaro is not mis-directed but if I am wrong I will certainly let him know in no uncertain terms.
I am too old to worry about whether or not you think I should hero worship silly children who signed up 10 years after a lost war.
But they should be treated properly when they get back and if they are injured.
I do wonder though how long the veteran thing has to last. All their lives because they do one tour of duty?
A few years? What? I had friends die from agent orange and others who killed themselves after nam.
THEY WERE CONSCRIPTS, THEY HAD NO FRIGGING CHOICE.
Voluntary armed forces have the choice not to do it.
Now we have the absurd and completely obscene situation of Australian VOLUNTEER SOLDIERS killing and occupying
AFghanistan and other VOLUNTEER soldiers building frigging prisons on bird shit islands for the victims of the wars.
I do not have to worship soldiers, and anyone who can’t handle that knows not one thing about me.
My best friend drove himself into a tree doing 150 miles per hour 3 weeks before Bob Hawke finally recognised their INVOLUNTARY service in a war we should never have been in.
I think if all countries had to have bake sales to raise money for armies we would all be better off.
I wonder though how you all feel about that creep on 7.30 report, an Australian mercenary killer from South Africa training criminal militia in Somalia while we jail Somali refugees.
It goes around in circles, we blew up ‘Nam and Cambodia and Laos to suit the US then jailed and tortured and drowned the victims – now we do it again.
Why should those VOLUNTARY soldiers who signed on to kill ragheads (as they happily call them) be considered heroes?
My own veteran of 6 years in the trenches grand father had not a thing to do with one other soldier from the end of WW11`until the day he died because he thought wars were the stupidest things in history that never solved a thing.
It is racist to pretend that our nice shiney boys are worth more than the 70 year old man and his son gunned down by us, or the children gunned down in their beds by us.
Or the thugs who dress up like the KKK and bastardise their mates, and rape the women, and have little acts of bastardry every day of the year go unpunished.
Spare me the violins.
BUT. We have not done one single thing to help the Vietnamese, today we do nothing about cleaning up the agent orange, we do nothing for the disabled children born from it, we jail Vietnamese orphans and deny refuge to children as young as 6 – so spare me the hero Australian crap.
Hi bundysmum, thanks for your support of our campaign i hope that Mike does what he said he would do last election. Also i don’t think that you will have too bare your bum as it is the sameold garbage that marilyn s no doubt. @ MARILYN S, i can tell you that vietnam vets have been building community halls, schools, clearing mines in vietnam and cambodia and such for years. They have also found the remains of north vietnamese soldiers who were killed in the fire support base balmoral and passed them onto family members, how do i know this because i was involved in that incedent, also this was done with money that was raised by veterans and not one penny from the govt. Also orphanages were built by these fine men so stop your bullshit and go and crawl back under that rock that you live under. I will be in south aussie early next year so please tell me the vets that you know and i will get them the help that need too get comp for their exposure to agent orange. By the way the govt never once helped in any of this.
That’s good John Lawrence but so you should.
Then here we are today with the racist, ignorant moron Gillard and her dopey sidekick Emerson signing a deal to trade and traffic brown human beings to New Guinea.
And she goes all the way to Russia to do it, she is oblivious to human suffering and human rights and always has been and it seems our AG Roxon has no interest in upholding laws, the courts or our legal obligations to anyone.