Team Australia a refuge for scoundrels

TONY Abbott has been at it for a couple of weeks now – referring to “Team Australia”. It tells us a lot about how he and his government think.

He said, “So we do have to be vigilant against [home-grown terrorist plotting], and my position is that everyone has got to be on Team Australia.

“Everyone has got to put this country, its interests, its values and its people first, and you don’t migrate to this country unless you want to join our team.”

Abbott has also used the team analogy more generally than a reference to migrants.

Teams, of course, compete. They usually represent a geographic area – a town, suburb, state or country.

The team is chosen on the basis of strength and fitness. The weak, vulnerable and female are excluded.

Recall Janis Ian’s song “At Seventeen” – “And those whose names were never called when choosing sides for basketball.”

Even if included, as the team plays, the stronger players will biff, elbow out, push, eject or tackle weaker players. That is the way team play works.

That is how the Budget was crafted – to bundle out the weak and vulnerable so Team Australia could be economically stronger.

Your team, of course, is always right. Other teams bite ears, jab elbows into eye-sockets, cheat and break the rules.

If your team is chastised or pulled up by the umpire, the umpire is wrong or one-eyed.

These are not good attributes for a nation wanting to take a constructive part in the international community.

Teams also wear uniforms. Frightening.

Of course, Mum at home cleans the uniforms after they have been muddied in the team play. Recall the advertisements for laundry detergents featuring young lads with impossibly muddy football jumpers.

Further, “teams” have “captain’s calls”. Abbott has done a few of these – selecting some for special treatment to be called “sir” or “dame”, or for some to have richly undeserved maternity benefits.

The “captain’s call” is an integral part of Abbott’s team play. It is undemocratic, and bypasses normal consultative processes. Even some top players are excluded from decision-making in the Abbott team.

It also means that the captain choses who plays which part – his favoured players.

It will be purely up to the captain to determine, for example, if Player Joe gets moved from the forwards to the backs because, for example, even though Player Joe has scored quite a few goals, most of them have been own goals.

A lot of “teams” are sponsored by big corporations who get naming rights. This means they can associate themselves with the glory and emotion of team sport instead of delivering customer service and value for money. It also means that they can influence the team in all sorts of ways.

Teams fight for a position in the top division and try to lead whatever division they are in. Team Australia is in the G20 and aspires to be in the G8.

These league tables are based purely upon economic power – total GDP, not international good citizenry or commitment to quality of life or quality of the environment.

When you migrate to Abbott’s Australia, you must join our team. Everyone else is presumed to be part of the team through birth. When you come to live or are born in inner Melbourne you support Collingwood. In north Adelaide you support Port Adelaide. In South Sydney you support the Rabbitohs. Your team, your tribe. Insular, unthinking loyalty.

These values when coupled with linguistic, racial or religious differences can result in violence, even war.

In Britain, this sort of thinking has resulted in soccer hooliganism and, worse, serious violence between the supporters of rival teams.

Political leaders often turn to this tribalist, patriotic way of thinking when in trouble internally. As Samuel Johnson said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

The invitation to “Team Australia, right or wrong” demands uncritical following of the values posited by the captain and support for the measures the captain puts forward in the interests of the “team”.

The team must come first. We are expected to blindly accept “anti-terror” laws that threaten our civil liberties. We are expected to put the team first and accept cruel treatment of people who “threaten” our team by arriving destitute and unarmed on our shores in boats.

In truth, however, in Australia today, the people who are really departing from the core Australian values of humanity, diversity, fair go, liberty and inclusiveness are the well-off, privileged, elite, middle-aged men of Tony Abbot’s cabinet.
CRISPIN HULL
This article first appeared in the Canberra Times on 23 August 2014.