Big Foot, first term Labor and questions of national identity

Collectively, under Rudd, we carve our way towards a new organically home-grown identity that rates compassion alongside commerce and places the “social” firmly on the table alongside the “economic”.

We seem to have moved away from Howard’s white Australia where brown people were locked up for trying to come here, where black people were told to become like whites and where white people were paid to breed. We seem to have accepted that climate change was not a creation or some fiction of the Left and recognised that the Australian notion of a “fair go” extends to people’s right to be industrially and independently protected while at work.

For The Australian to keep banging on about rooting out this mythical “big foot” beast, “the Left”, seems petulant given the public’s ready embrace of change at the last election. The fault lines have reconfigured. The people have spoken. The debate has moved on. In a landslide, Australians fore-grounded social justice and the importance of an inclusive national identity predicated on social issues and the spirit of fair go.

It’s time The Australian got its big feet back on planet earth to engage in the emerging dialogue about national identity under Rudd, rather than resorting to the recalcitrant tactics of irrelevant name calling - the easy posturing of all sore losers.