WELL DONE, WOOLWORTHS!

In a move certain to make bogans’ collective heads implode, Australian retailer Woolworths has announced that neither it nor its department store Big W will be selling Australia Day merchandise in its stores, apart from flags.

Much of the Australia Day merchandise has been quite offensive, such as singlets emblazoned with, “If You Don’t Love It, Leave,” with a flag printed on it, and some have taken to wearing the flag like a cape or shrouding themselves in it, and research has shown that people who put Australian flags on the mirrors of their cars are actually more likely to be racist. To be brutally honest with you, I say that only the prime ministerial limousine needs to be decked out with the Australian flag, not people’s cars.

To analyze the Australian flag, and to see why it is controversial, especially when it is flown alongside the Aboriginal flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag, it has the Union Jack in the top left-hand corner, symbolizing the fact that Australia is a self-governing British dominion, an eight-point flag for six states and two territories (the ACT and Northern Territory) and the Southern Cross, a constellation seen over Australia. The Aboriginal flag is the rising sun with the blood of the Indigenous people sinking into the soil. We cannot be, as right-wing potty Pauline Hanson claims, “One People, One Nation, One Flag,” (one word difference from Hitler’s slogan) unless we acknowledge the Indigenous peoples. Furthermore, to prove Hanson’s hypocrisy and double standards, in 1996, she made the claim that Australia was giving too much to Japan and claimed, erroneously, that they were going to invade Australia, over half a century earlier, yet, she says that people who are still suffering as a result of the Stolen Generation need to get over it! She has not said that Pacific War Veterans need to get over what happened to them!

This is not a case of Woolworths appealing to “wokeness” but Woolworths making a commercial decision based upon a reduction in demand for Australia Day merchandise. It is not unpatriotic for Woolworths to do that any more than it would be for Australians who don’t want to buy it. So, congratulations to Woolworths, and I hope your competitors follow suit.