Australian Politics: Future Patterns

Abstract

Bicentennials and the like characteristically become times of com placency, of celebrations of the national achievement, of a mass stroking of the national ego and the national psyche, reaching occasionally the pits of vulgarity and the heights of hyperbole. Undeniably 1988 is a proper time for confirmation of the national identity, although there are great disputes about what exactly that is. There are national achievements to be celebrated, there are good and true stories to be told, of bravery and generosity, of social experimen tation and advance, of serious attempts to break away from external patterns and bondages. But 1988 also gives us the chance, indeed requires us, to scrutinise critically where we are and where we have come from, though that enterprise, which mixes love and self- criticism, even impiety, should be continuous. It is not that we should walk short rather than walk tall (along with Bob, Alan, Kerry and Co.), that we should become ‘moaning minnies’, to use a fashionable British term for those who want to thoughtfully examine rather than unthink ingly endorse their society. We cannot look back and say simply: ‘Well done mates!’ Proper pride and critical reflectiveness can co exist happily. And acceptance of the responsibility of our forbears for bad as well as good things need in no way leave us crippled with guilt: it could and should underlie positive action towards a better society.