Comment
Marcia Langton
Dutton, Advance and the Welcome to Country
On Anzac Day, at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, a sacred moment was ruptured. Neo-fascist Jacob Hersant led a group in abusing Uncle Mark Brown, a Bunurong and Gunditjmara Traditional Owner who was delivering the Welcome to Country. The event heralded a political pile-on and a new chapter in race-baiting in Australia.
Tapping into the historical racism that began with the British invasion has proved easier for the race-baiters than even I could imagine. Building on their success in opposing the Voice referendum, the “No” campaign apparatchiks have manipulated the meaning of the Welcome to Country ceremony to portray it as an assault on the nation’s sovereignty. Following Peter Dutton’s refusal to stand in front of an Aboriginal flag, claiming falsely that Australia has one flag, the drift towards the “blood and soil” slogan is now in full view.
In November last year, Hersant was the first Victorian to be convicted of performing the illegal Nazi salute and shouting “Heil Hitler” in public. He was given a one-month jail sentence but was soon after back on the streets doing Nazi stuff with a fresh look.
Victorians have become familiar with various neo-fascist groups exploiting public events to gain attention for their goal of white supremacy. The hijacking of Moira Deeming’s “women’s” event is the most famous example, ultimately bringing former Victorian opposition leader John Pesutto undone.
We failed, however, to predict that disrupting the Anzac Day ceremony was on their agenda. Dishonouring the fallen who fought the fascist armies of Europe in World War II was not a step too far for some right-wing creatures. When we pull back the curtains, we see a very nasty strategy designed at the desks of the “No” campaign leaders.
Investigative journalist Anthony Klan reported that just a week before Anzac Day the far-right lobby group Advance had sent an email to its supporters titled “Sick of hearing ‘Welcome to Country’?” The email claimed that the Indigenous “Welcome to Country” is part of a secretive plan by “elites” to “delegitimise Australia’s history”.
Advance – which claimed it was opposed to the Indigenous Voice because it was “divisive” – has said the ceremony “is about delegitimising your place in the country”. It went further, claiming that the ceremony “actually means … this isn’t your country anymore” and “it’s time you paid up”. According to Advance executive director Matthew Sheahan: “It’s about delegitimising your place in the country, your family’s history, the sacrifice and blood, sweat and tears that went into building Australia.”
The ground for the new “blood and soil” approach to Australian nationalism had been well-prepared. In 2024, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price began bleating about the Welcome to Country ceremonies. Her attacks were published in the media and in material produced by Advance.
In January this year, The Daily Telegraph splashed with a headline “Welcome to cash country”. In the piece, Price claimed the federal government had spent $452,953 on Welcome to Country events over the previous two financial years.
Price has disclosed among her parliamentary interests that she is “a lead spokeswoman for Advance’s Fair Australia campaign”. As Anthony Klan points out, the lobby group has received more funding from the Liberal Party than was paid by the Commonwealth government for Welcome to Country ceremonies – a total of $500,000 last financial year, through the Liberal Party investment group known as the Cormack Foundation.
The Advance campaign’s mischievous letter to its supporters clearly incited the protests at Anzac Day ceremonies, where the Welcome to Country ceremonies were conducted. This is the ferment in which Peter Dutton and Jacinta Price are playing.
One of the most startling indications of the depth of the white supremacist attitudes among Advance was the racist cartoon the group submitted to run as a full-page advertisement in The Australian Financial Review. The newspaper, owned by Nine Entertainment, was forced to apologise.
The cartoon depicted Kate Chaney, an independent candidate in Western Australia, sitting on her father’s knee as he handed money to a 1920s-style “jigaboo” depiction of Thomas Mayo, a Torres Strait Islander man who was a leading campaigner for the “Yes” proposition during the referendum.
Beyond the Liberal Party, most of Advance’s funding comes from fewer than a dozen entities. The majority of them are estimated to be worth more than $100 million. The “No” campaign was bankrolled by the super rich, just as the attacks on Welcome to Country ceremonies are.
Peter Dutton was quick to say the neo-Nazi booing at Anzac Day was “unacceptable” – and was just as quick to launch new attacks on Welcome to Country ceremonies afterwards, capitalising on the hatred. He claimed that Aboriginal people were “cheapening” our ceremonies by conducting them too often and causing “division”. This from the man who boycotted Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations in the federal parliament on February 13, 2008.
Dutton’s main attack, echoing Price’s earlier whining, was that there are too many, that they are boring and they are “divisive”. This was picked up by the online white supremacist community in the misleading claim that the ceremony welcomes Australians to their own nation. Many asked why they would need to be “welcomed to our own country”.
Traditional Owners welcome people not to the construct of Australia created at Federation but to ancient customary estates and invite all Australians to feel the spirits of these places. Dutton and Price know so little about our culture and history that they misunderstand this basic premise. They peddle their lies because they believe in an assimilationist view based on “race”. We are not a “race”. We have hundreds of cultures and languages. Dutton and Price are opposed to their survival, our survival.
Only we who are a part of an Indigenous culture – led by Elders and community consensus – are permitted to discuss these traditions. Dutton’s idea that we are “cheapening” our traditions is not just deeply offensive but absurd. He hates our cultural traditions and places no value on them. The widespread view that he is playing the race card to incite hatred of us is not without basis in fact.
A notable follow-up after Dutton’s comments about Aboriginal people “cheapening” our culture came from former prime minister Tony Abbott. He spoke to Ben Fordham on radio station 2GB, saying he had “a fundamental problem with these things”. Then he compared the ceremonies to wearing masks during the pandemic, claiming “wearing masks became a political statement”.
Was he comparing Aboriginal people to a virus, just as Nazi propaganda had claimed about Jews? I could not unsee the reference.
Then Dutton claimed RSL clubs were opposed to the Welcome to Country ceremony. This was promptly countered by some RSL clubs, which stated this was not the case. Their spokespeople pointed out that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had served in every war and conflict for the Australian Defence Force since Federation. Even before Federation, some had served in the British Imperial Army in the Boer War in southern Africa.
Dutton and his colleagues are trawling the bottom of the swamp for “undecided” voters. Coming so close to the end of the election campaign, with the polls turning slightly against Dutton and the Coalition, it’s not difficult to see that this is likely to be the case. What was not so obvious, however, was the ground plan built up over more than two years to sully the Welcome to Country ceremony and use it to win votes from Australian jingoism and a range of word-play tactics.
Tonight, everything will be revealed about the febrile Australian electorate. A majority Labor government, a majority Coalition government, or a hung parliament? Almost a third of voters are sceptical of the old two-party system, and many are fleeing to the Greens and the independent candidates. We know that many are undecided.
While cost of living, the housing crisis and energy prices are the guts of the big party policies on offer, the obsession with Aboriginal issues so late in the campaign tells us how easy it is to put the frighteners on voters with a bit of Aboriginal bashing. Then there’s Senator Price’s promises to audit all Indigenous affairs spending to uncover “corruption”, but nothing about how she would overcome the disadvantages of those she purports to represent. She has announced she will eliminate indoctrination in schools and promises to overhaul curricula.
Many Elders are saying we should stop the Welcome to Country ceremonies altogether, in an attempt to stop the racism. Others insist they must continue so that our cultural traditions are recognised. Decent Australians who reject racism and exclusion will continue to ask Traditional Owners to conduct Welcome ceremonies.
I hope that decency wins. Yet part of me knows this ugliness will never go away and will be raised repeatedly by those seeking to use Aboriginal people and our traditions as a battering ram. These people actively oppose a modern Australia whose citizens recognise the ancient foundations of the First Peoples who shaped the natural environments with love and fire, as well as the contribution of the British and the non-British who came to enjoy the wealth and beauty of our continent and islands.
They stand, just as Dutton and Advance stand, shoulder to shoulder with neo-Nazis.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on May 3, 2025 as "Dutton, Advance and the Welcome to Country".
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