WHY WE SHOULD BE PROUD OF GRETA.
In 1998, the Australian of the Year was Olympic and Commonwealth Games athlete, Cathy Freeman and the Young Australian of the Year, Tan Le. Cathy Freeman, for those who don't know, identifies as Indigenous Australian, and has served as an ambassador (as well as a European Australian parent, she has some Chinese ancestry, with her great-great-grandfather having come to Australia in 1886 to work on the cane fields) for youth, and was equally famous for taking a lap of honour at the 1994 Commonwealth Games, holding aloft the Aboriginal flag (the upper half is black and the lower red with the sun represented as a yellow disc in the centre) and the Australian flag with the Union Jack, the Southern Cross and the star symbolising six states and two territories. That font of all nonsense, Hanson, decried the award, claiming that they were a swipe at her. Hanson was the politician who claimed numerous untruths regarding Aboriginals and non-white immigrants.
So now, with Greta Thunberg being announced as the Person of the Year by Time Magazine, I have seen people attack her for how she looks, how she talks and what she says.
I remember reading the most preposterous attempt by a former staffer to defend the worst "Prime Minister" Australia has endured, abbott. Claiming that he was, "Sneered at, ridiculed…but he still stood up." For those who haven't heard much, abbott's only political agenda was to destroy Labor's legacy and rewind us to the 1950s. He abolished an effective means of reducing carbon emissions not for any other reason than it threatened the coal lobby that wasn't prepared to accept change and because the polluters didn't want to pay. On a small scale level, he didn't know that the country north of the USA is Canada not Canadia or the difference between a rectally inserted medication and a place where things are stored. Furthermore, he reintroduced Imperial Honours, claiming that an Order Of Australia, be it a Companion or Merit, was "too girly". People were right to sneer at abbott.
Greta Thunberg is 40 years younger than abbott was when he was elected to embarrass this country, and she has been rubbished by that font of all nonsense, Hanson, as having no life experience, and others "She's only sixteen." Well, there are sixteen year old people who are more interested in dressing like Kim Kardashian, but there are also sixteen year old people who have seen their houses destroyed by bombings, friends and family killed in wars, and have survived in refugee camps. There are others who have endured rounds of chemotherapy, who will be lucky to live to be eighteen.
With the state of bushfires in Australia (no, the "It's Summertime," argument is nonsense) and a Prime Minister offering "Thoughts and Prayers," what we need is not thoughts and prayers (hey, there are kids younger than 16 affected by them) but someone who is prepared to take action. Someone who is prepared to say, "We need to reduce carbon emissions," and is prepared to do it. Someone who is prepared to stare down world leaders and say, "No, your claims that we will meet our Paris Commitments "at a canter" is nothing more than empty words. And whether that person is 16, 56 or even 96, they have to be taken seriously.
Greta Thunberg may be thought to have a childlike innocence, but she has displayed a level of maturity beyond her 16 years and a level of self-acceptance that shames some older people.