Adventures in Correspondentland

by Nick Bryant

  There was also a strict prohibition on the Mexican wave, with casino-style cameras equipped with super-slow-mo technology trained on every seat to pinpoint the miscreant who first flung his arms skyward.

  Streakers tempted to sprint across the oval faced a lifetime ban, and a $5500 fine – $5000 plus GST, presumably. The Queensland Police Service’s Elite Public Safety Response Team had even undergone anti-terrorist-training exercises in nearby Ipswich, although the only thing that was blown up, other than beachballs, was an inflatable sex doll that had to be ejected from the Vulcan Street End.

  On the eve of the Ashes, the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission even managed to elbow its way in, placing strictures on what fans could actually say. In describing the English team and their supporters, it ruled that the word ‘Pom’ was permissible but ran the risk of being racist if used in conjunction with stiffer forms of abuse, such as ‘bastard’ or even ‘whingeing’. Hence, the phrase ‘Pommy bastard’ was banned, which seemed the colloquial equivalent of removing the red kangaroo from the coat of arms and leaving behind a solitary emu.

  Inevitably, this came to be described as political correctness gone mad, but it was actually Australian officialdom that was certifiable. For all the boos and catcalls directed at the police when a drunken boofhead was hauled from his seat, still more unexpected was the meek acquiescence of the Australian fans in the face of this bossy authoritarianism. For me, of course, this was manna from heaven and the Australia I had yearned to cover: the land of punctured stereotypes.

  Sadly, the cricket fitted the usual template. Australia thumped England five–nil, with the familiar tag-team of Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne showing that England’s oak hearts had the fortitude of polystyrene. But if England expected Australia to rejoice in regaining the Ashes with Latin American-style horn honking, all-night benders, an open-top bus tour through the canyons of Sydney’s central business district and Andrew Symonds peeing in the herb garden at The Lodge, it would be sorely disappointed. Rather than celebrating the balancing of some imaginary historical ledger, or the righting of some terrible imperial wrong, Australian sports fans merely thought that Ricky Ponting and his men had restored the natural order. Accordingly, their celebrations were disappointingly restrained.

  If anything, the main thing to report from the Sydney Cricket Ground during the final test was not the boisterousness of the after-match celebrations but the confected sentimentality of the farewell to three Aussie legends playing their final match: Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Justin Langer. They were serenaded by an English opera star, who belted out Francesco Sartori’s ‘Con te Partirò’ as the trio fidgeted uncomfortably on the balcony of their dressing room.

  More happily, it was also time to say goodbye to another Antipodean trope: that for Australians the Ashes were somehow defining – not so much a matter of life and death, as the great Bill Shankly would have put it, but far more important. That was another canard, however much us Poms preferred to think otherwise. Further evidence of this came after the 2009 Lord’s Test match, when England managed finally to end a 65-year losing streak at headquarters. The program editors back home desperately wanted me to brandish before the cameras the morning papers from Australia, presumably in the expectation that the front pages would be framed with black edging and funereal in tone, with special commemorative supplements chronicling the downfall of Antipodean cricket. Yet I was unable to report that the country had suffered any great national convulsion or breakdown. Instead, I suggested that in the Pavlovian pantomime that is the modern-day Ashes the audience participation in this corner of the planet has so far been fairly muted. Hordes of crestfallen Australians cussing the wretched British? That was quite definitely behind them.

  If anything, in a curious historical inversion, I suspect that the Ashes have now become more important to modern-day Britain than to modern Australia. For a nostalgic nation that has spent the past six decades or so managing its post-imperial decline, the thought that Australia suffers enormous pain whenever it is beaten by the Old Country is deeply heartening. Likewise, it is soothing to think that the Aussies are motivated by a desire to balance an imaginary ledger, since it implies an outstanding deficit and a perpetual state of borrowing. What is more, it helps compensate for the neglect of other former dominions.

  India, after all, is too busy becoming a superpower to dwell on the legacy of the Raj; America has for 200 years been defined by the revolution that ousted the British rather than its subjugation beforehand; and Canada’s insecurities are a product of small-neighbour syndrome vis-a-vis the US rather than being the last North American outpost of the British Empire.

  Australia is therefore unique, or so we like to think: a country where the rivalry with Britain continues to arouse great passion, and we are flattered by the continued attention. Each morning of every Test match, the Barmy Army rose en masse to belt out the national anthem, with a slight, though wounding, alteration to the words: ‘God Save Your Queen’. But perhaps it revealed more about the insecurities of the singers than the sung to.

  Another misconception in my homeland about the Ashes is that the ritualistic eruption of Pom-bashing is a sign of Australians’ hostility towards the British. The reverse, of course, is true. It is a sign of familial love. And just as there is no country in the world, with the sole exception of New Zealand, that offers an Englishman a warmer welcome, none feels more instantly recognisable.

  Whether in politics, sport, law or public broadcasting, the British way retains its permeating influence, and an inordinate amount of cultural and civic space continues to be surrendered to the British-made or British-influenced. Australia Day celebrates the moment of British colonisation. British colours still adorn the Australian flag (‘Britain at night’, according to Jerry Seinfeld). Most of the country marks the monarch’s birthday with a public holiday, a courtesy not even observed back home. There are still some 160,000 Britons eligible to vote in Australian federal elections, a fancy franchise shared with other residents from the British Commonwealth but with no other non-citizens. This is still a land of royal commissions, crown prosecutions, majestic coinage and of Her Majesty’s warplanes, ships and prisons.

  All of which brings us to the most conspicuous paradox that successive BBC Australia correspondents have been expected to explain: why such a strongly patriotic country still retains an English-born head of state. Leaving aside its nationalistic spirit, which has intensified over the past decade, should not Australia’s laconic informality, irreverent larrikinism, lack of snobbery and egalitarianism have militated against the idea of hereditary privilege and an institution that sits at the apex of the British class system?

  However, republicanism could never be described as an urgent national priority. Far from it. Constitutional inertia, of course, is partly to blame. The lack of consensus among republicans is obviously another reason. But perhaps the idea of having an English-born head of state does not seem especially incongruous because the British influence in Australia remains so pervasive.

  Sir Robert Menzies, for whom the term Anglophile seems wholly inadequate, had it sort of right in his much-lampooned speech in 1963 during a reception for the queen at Parliament House. Describing Her Majesty as ‘the living and lovely centre of our enduring alliance’, he sounded in parts like an elderly English professor with a crush on one of his students, not least the passage recalling the misty-eyed words of the seventeenth-century poet Thomas Ford. ‘I did but see her passing by / And yet I love her till I die.’ But that night in Canberra, Menzies also spoke of the joint allegiance between Britain and Australia that was ‘an addition to our freedom, not a subtraction from it’. Almost 50 years on, that remains a resilient idea, and it might remain so even after Queen Elizabeth has gone and the influence of ‘Elizabethans’ – the small ‘r’ republicans who are intellectually in favour of an Australian head of state but do not want to offend Her Majesty by agitating for her removal – has waned.

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sp; Certainly, the republican movement has struggled to produce a counter-narrative. On the tenth anniversary of the failed 1999 referendum, a dozen or so republicans gathered on the grass avenue in front of Parliament House for a brief and slightly mournful ceremonial. The plan, as one of the organisers fussily explained it to his fellow republicans, was to converge slowly on the building’s pillared facade from all sides of the great courtyard in front, as if to symbolise the groundswell of support from every corner of the land. Then wicker baskets of wattle would be placed at the doors, like wreathes at the cenotaph on Anzac Day.

  The organiser was thinking ‘spectacle’. Alas, the policeman listening over his shoulder was thinking ‘permit’. The poor chap from the republican movement had forgotten to apply for the necessary paperwork, and the police barred the protesters from stepping onto the courtyard. For Australia to become a republic, it requires still a great leap of national imagination. On that anniversary morning, its most ardent advocates were not even allowed to cross the road.

  To emphasise Australia’s Anglo-centrism is not to deny the transformational impact of other European and Asian influences, which have obviously grown in recent times as the proportion of UK immigrants has declined. Nor is it to ignore the cross-flow of cultural influences. After all, Britain has aped Australia in recent years, whether it is because so many middle-class toddlers are raised by Antipodean nannies or because we spent so many of our formative years in Ramsay Street.

  When asked whether he preferred Coronation Street or Eastenders, Britain’s new prime minister David Cameron unapologetically replied, ‘Neighbours.’ Because of his breezy informality, the classless Tony Blair has been described as Britain’s first Australian prime minister. Why, The Sun even launched a campaign to have Kylie Minogue’s arse heritage-listed. For all that, the historic and sentimental link with Britain remains one of the single biggest keys to understanding modern-day Australia.

  The Stuart Highway stretched before me like a silver ribbon, the distant asphalt shimmering in the baking outback sun. Three hours out of Alice, the ball-by-ball cricket commentary had been completely enveloped by an electric storm of white noise, and the rare thrill of driving faster than 100 kph had given way to tedium (oh, to have driven this road two years earlier, when there was no speed limit at all).

  With the digital dial on the radio a blur of rapidly changing numbers, like some demented pokie machine, alternative entertainment came from the advertising hoardings and their game of roadside one-upmanship: ‘Cold Beer’, ‘Ice-Cold Beer’, ‘Come in for a Coldie’. Like the motels, campsites and petrol stations en route – ‘free coffee for the driver’ was the standard bribe – remote towns battled for attention and tourist dollars. As I continued north, a billboard outside Ti Tree boasted that it had the most central pub in the nation. Wycliffe Well laid claim to being the UFO capital of Australia. It also trumpeted the last toilet in 240 kilometres, an early warning that I foolishly ignored – which meant that despite having no close encounters I ended up an hour further on with an uncomfortably close call.

  By now, I had warmed to the fleeting mateship of the highway, with its unwritten code of gestures and drive-by gesticulations. At the beginning of my journey, I had started with a minimalist offering, peeling just two fingers off the steering wheel to greet oncoming fellow travellers. Further on, I discarded my British inhibitions and started to simulate a ‘good on ya, mate’-style punch to the upper arm. An elderly Aboriginal gentleman, wearing a wide-brimmed black felt hat, who was crawling down the highway in a beaten-up Holden, produced by far the best response. He languidly offered an outstretched arm and an open palm in what looked like a regal wave.

  I always looked forward to these journeys into the outback, largely because it was the only time in Australia that I truly felt like a bona-fide foreign correspondent. The Northern Territory was a country within a country, where time seemed static and where a miserable inventory of statistics highlighted the glaring breach between white and black Australia. A life expectancy 17 years shorter. An unemployment rate three times higher. An incarceration rate 13 times as bad. Rundown townships, strewn with junk and the rusting carcasses of broken-down cars, looked like they more rightly belonged in Soweto. Squalid living conditions suggested a developing nation rather than a front-rank country – not quite Third World but definitely not First.

  To visit an Indigenous community was to cross over an invisible border, with the permit system that blocked unwelcome visitors operating in much the same way as the visa requirements of a sovereign state. The permit system, however, was arguably more pernicious. The letters of welcome needed for entry were often controlled by local elders, who partly did not want to expose their communities to the prying eyes of the media but also possibly had something to hide themselves.

  Once, we spent almost an entire day waiting outside Mutitjulu, the Indigenous community in the shadow of Uluru, having first been promised entry and then seen our invitation withdrawn at the last minute. Sympathetic as we were to the idea that Indigenous communities wanted privacy and the diluted version of sovereignty that the permit system conferred, it meant Aboriginal Australia was sometimes harder to get into than Burma.

  The irony is, of course, that Indigenous communities suffer not from intrusion but from neglect. It is the country’s great fly-over problem, ignored by most Australians as they jet off to Bali or Europe. Indeed, the closest most come to an Indigenous township is from 30,000 feet. For all that, in granting us such limited and mistrustful access to their communities, I sometimes left feeling that Indigenous Australia was also ghettoising itself.

  My happiest visit to the Northern Territory came in the run-up to Sorry Day, when hundreds of members of the Stolen Generations boarded buses to Canberra, drawn by the promise of a single word. From the town camps on the fringes of Alice Springs, we followed them to the capital, and saw them crying and applauding in the galleries of parliament as Kevin Rudd delivered the long-awaited apology on this day of national atonement.

  Never in Australia have I seen anything quite so stirring as the sight of Indigenous Australians turning up at parliament dressed in T-shirts emblazoned with the word ‘Sorry’ and leaving in new tops printed with ‘Thanks’. Interviewing members of the Stolen Generations on the lawn outside parliament, where raucous big-screen cheers had greeted Kevin Rudd’s speech, I lost count of the number who cried openly on air. But the guest I remember most vividly was Senator Barnaby Joyce, whom we had lined up to speak on behalf of the Sorry sceptics.

  He, too, arrived with reddened eyes, having been overcome himself by the immense emotion of the day. While all of us knew that a sorry should never be mistaken for a solution, that two-syllable word, uttered thrice, had signalled a definitive break with the past. By tackling this piece of unfinished business, Kevin Rudd also performed a much-needed repair job to his country’s international reputation. After all, in assumed Australia the whitefellas had always treated the blackfellas with cruelty and indifference.

  When it came to racism in Australia, the story I found myself wanting to write was at odds with the story I ended up reporting. Probably the reality lay somewhere in between. In a country so easily stereotyped as a redneck nation, where racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia lurked so close to the surface, could not the case also be made for Australian tolerance? After all, the comparative success of its multicultural experiment suggested that nobler impulses were also at work.

  Just after the war, over 90 per cent of the 7.5 million people living in Australia were Anglo-Celtic. Since then, the population had tripled, with 44 per cent of Australians either born overseas or having at least one parent from a foreign country. Given the strength of nativism in the early history of modern Australia and the durability of the White Australia policy until the late-1960s, surely it was remarkable that such massive demographic changes had not unleashed an angrier backlash? I thought so.

  Part of the reason why the Cronulla riot was so very jolting, and caused
so much national introspection, was because these kinds of racist eruptions were so exceptional. To turn their white trash-talk back on them, could not the rioters themselves, with Aussie flags clasped tight around their shoulders and the Southern Cross inked into their skin, be described as un-Australian in their violent rejection of newcomers?

  Like Cronulla, the rise of Pauline Hanson, that blow-dried Bogan Boadicea, appeared to confirm to international audiences that everything we thought about Australian intolerance was true. Yet Hansonism proved a short-lived phenomenon, and its onetime figurehead was now a figure of fun. She had even become a contestant on Dancing with the Stars, offering cast-iron proof of her has-been status.

  But it was also impossible to ignore the evidence of intolerance. Not all of the attacks against Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney were racially motivated, but we interviewed enough of the victims to know that the kicks and punches were usually accompanied by racist abuse. Not all of the opposition to the construction of an Islamic school in the rural town of Camden, New South Wales, was based on raw Islamophobia. Yet it was hard to do the story complete justice without quoting the local Pauline Hanson-clone who feared her children might grow up speaking ‘Islamic’.

  When first I arrived here, I was surprised to hear the word ‘Abo’ so frequently used, not least by well-remunerated and supposedly well-educated Australians who should have known better, and no doubt did. The word ‘Lebo’ was also modish at the time, and hinted at the creeping Islamophobia in the aftermath of 9/11 and Bali. ‘Paki’ was another word that was unacceptable elsewhere but fairly commonplace here. Also perplexing for a new arrival was the use of the word ‘wog’. To utter it in my homeland, of course, would be to immediately identify oneself as a thuggish racist, which I knew not to be the case in Australia. But was it not dispiriting that newly arrived immigrants adopted a slur as an ethnic badge in order to assimilate more quickly? Again, I thought so.