Comment

Stan Grant
What my country will never be

I have just returned from a writers’ festival in Auckland and I am still processing the experience. I was humbled to be among several writers to deliver the opening night address. Each of us was tasked with riffing on the theme “The moment I knew”.

There were some lovely reflections, some funny or heartening. Others were terribly sad. Each writer approached it with honesty and generosity.

I had something in mind that I thought was interesting – amusing, if on the safe side – but this required more. When it was my turn I recalled the moment I knew I was Australian.

Yes, I was born in Australia. I am of Irish convict stock. The most significant part of my family tree was here for thousands of years before Australia was.

Yet I never felt Australian. Growing up, Australia was for other people. I lived in a shadow world: we could see Australia, we walked among Australians, but they often couldn’t see us.

I had come from a history of segregation and exclusion. Ours was a hard history. It was common among Aboriginal kids, and I was one of them, to take great delight in Australia’s defeat on the sporting field.

This was my petty revenge. I would cheer for any team but Australia. In cricket, I supported the West Indies; in rugby union, the All Blacks. If Australia played England, I sang “God Save the Queen”.

This was the story I told the audience in New Zealand, to some amusement. I also told them how it all turned for me. When I moved overseas, I met my fellow Australian expats in a way I had never met them at home.

All of that history between us disappeared and I realised we were the same people. We shared the same memories. We knew what it was to endure a long, hot summer, to burn our stomachs on the cement at the local swimming pool, to play backyard cricket and eat a sticky orange iceblock on the way home from school.

We all listened to Cold Chisel.

Being Australian was a story, our story. I wasn’t American or English. I was Australian, whatever that meant. This country that had felt so foreign was all the while working its way into my memories and into my soul, even when I may not have realised it.

I finally turned at a rugby match where Australia played England at the famous Twickenham ground in London. I may have gone there childishly hoping England would win, but at one point the Australian captain, John Eales, lined up a kick at goal and I felt myself praying he was successful.

I wanted Australia to win. That’s the moment I knew.

A nation is messy. It is never finished. We are never one people – no nation is – but whatever this thing is, this Australia, I am in it and it is in me.

I write this now because I can love our Australia even as it breaks our hearts. I was reminded of that, too, in New Zealand. I feel that way whenever I visit. It is only a few hours on the plane, but it is another world.

I am reminded that Australia, however I may wish otherwise, will never be what I might want it to be. Aboriginal people will never have what Māori people have. Those Australians who are not Indigenous will never have what Pākehā New Zealanders have.

I should say what people in Aotearoa have. They have that name for a start. When I touched down I was welcomed to Aotearoa. Kiwis of all ethnicities greeted me with “kia ora”.

Māori language is ubiquitous. It’s not fluently spoken by all, but no one is deaf to it. Public spaces are routinely dual named. There are television programs in Māori.

At the writers’ festival, all welcomes were performed elaborately and generously in Māori. I don’t know whether some Pākehā may be offended, but if so I didn’t hear from them.

Māori and Pasifika are obviously more visible. Combined they are at least a quarter of the population.

Yet this is about more than just numbers; this is about the soul of the nation.

At the heart of Aotearoa is Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Treaty of Waitangi. It is not a traditional treaty, recognised under international law, but it is foundational to the modern state of New Zealand.

It is a document of participation, a partnership of equals that establishes Māori rights to political representation, land and resources. If breached, there are mechanisms for restitution.

That’s the legal framework and it continues to be interpreted, challenged and debated. The Waitangi Tribunal is under review at the moment, which is resisted by many as an attack on Te Tiriti.

It has always been thus. When Te Tiriti was signed by Māori leaders in 1840, the then lieutenant-governor of New Zealand, William Hobson, famously, or as some believe mythically, declared He iwi tahi tatou – Now we are one people. Far from it, in fact.

The treaty was bilingual – Māori and English versions – and there have been disputes over translation and interpretation that have led to conflict. Māori lost significant land and rights and, while there has been an ongoing struggle to establish and negotiate questions of sovereignty, they remain extremely disadvantaged.

Like Indigenous Australians, they have reduced life expectancy and the worst socioeconomic outcomes. That is not to be diminished.

Yet I might venture that, distribution of wealth and equity notwithstanding, Te Tiriti has a significance that seems to me beyond law. It exercises a gravitational pull on the country.

In a Newtonian sense, Māori and Pākehā derive equilibrium from an equal and opposite force. Simply, they are grounded.

Māori are recognised. Māori presence is not a concession or an extraction; it is essential.

I cannot say the same about my dear country. I do not say that Indigenous people are ignored, but we are absorbed. We exist within an Australia that legally and politically has no Indigenous antecedent.

That defines a nation. Terra nullius – empty land – remains our gravitational force. It holds the terms of Australian settlement in the way that Tiriti holds Aotearoa’s.

Biculturalism that appears authentic in New Zealand, exemplified in language, etiquette and ceremony, cannot but appear performative and strained in Australia. Māori traditional welcomes are not concessional, as they may be perceived to be here.

Is this because of Te Tiriti? I think so. Australia simply does not have an equivalent and at this stage in our nation’s maturity I have to conclude never will.

Whatever future treaties may be negotiated, they will not be foundational. This is simply the way Australia is made.

Many Indigenous people valorise treaty. It has taken on capital-T mythology. I don’t share that. I certainly support its efficacy and propriety, but it is limited. Māori may attest to that.

For one thing, I accept it would not be about sovereignty, not even in the politically constrained and contested sense of Aotearoa. At best it would be contingent and provisional, albeit meaningful, symbolically and practically.

Sovereignty, itself an awkward, ill-fitting word derived more from 17th-century British roots, will exist eternally, unbreakably, for Indigenous people in the metaphysical and sacred realm – in hearts and kinship. While utterly profound, this concept is beyond the capacity and imagination of modern political Australia.

No Australian prime minister mentions treaty with any serious intent.

The defeat of the Voice referendum – Voice, Treaty, Truth – reinforced the limits of the Australian settlement. It befalls an invigorated, resilient and courageous emerging Indigenous leadership to test the contours of that settlement, even as their aspirations are inevitably ringbarked.

Perhaps it is my melancholy soul, but I called my wife early one morning while out walking, and said that I could not help feeling sad. I was sad for what my country will never be. I told her we will never know what we might have been.

Not that I would wish to be from New Zealand or wish to be Māori. I am who I am. Australia is what it is.

It is a remarkable place. I am grateful and I have a lot for which to be grateful.

Being Australian is my story. It is a love story: tender, wistful and vulnerable, if perhaps unrequited. My sadness is a measure of that love.

That’s what I told the audience at the Auckland Writers Festival.

I told them I will still cheer for our sporting teams, just as I cheered at Twickenham all those years ago.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on May 24, 2025 as "What my country will never be".

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