On the first of January 1901 Australia appointed its first Federal public servant - the Secretary to the Attorney General’s Department. His name was Robert R. Garran.
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Garran, the son of a Congregational minister, had helped in the drafting of Australia’s Federal Constitution.
He wrote many other interesting pieces during his life, including poems and prayers. In his hopes for Australia he wrote the following poem.
“Help us build a nation,
A people proud and free –
Proud of our high vocation,
Humble, O Lord, to Thee.
Aflame with high endeavour,
Though many paths be trod,
Keep us united ever,
One people, serving God.”
I do not know what Garran would make of modern Australia’s descent into a morass of strange understandings about what it means to be a productive social contributor to our society. I suspect that, like a very large number of us, he would be totally surprised by the way we have trashed so many beliefs, ideas, values and behaviours considered essential for a decent democratic society.
What the 62,000 Australian men killed in W.W. 1, all of whom we rightly continue to honour every year at this time, would have made of our social understandings today is another critical consideration. I suspect that their judgements would make us all hang our heads in shame.
Today our public ideas are hedged about with all manner of restrictions. Even our presumed fundamental rights of free speech are not free – they are, despite what our Constitution states, merely “exceptions”, within the plethora of “rights” regulations across our different government institutions.
The current misrepresentations of truth, and assorted claims and demands around any versions of discrimination, whether real or imagined, result from the negative basis of our ad hoc regulations.
We need a positive approach to establishing our freedoms today.
Bruce Watson,
Kentucky NSW
