The
Guardian, 3
April 2019:
The Labor senator and
Yawuru man Pat Dodson spoke about the links between Australia’s massacre
history and the terrorist attacks in Christchurch, while addressing the censure
motion against Fraser Anning in
the Senate.
The
motion condemned Anning for his “inflammatory and divisive comments
seeking to attribute blame to victims of a horrific crime and to vilify people
on the basis of religion, which do not reflect the opinions of the Australian
Senate or the Australian people.”
Dodson said Indigenous
people carry the consequence of murderous prejudice “throughout our entwined
history”.
“First Nations’ peoples … know the impacts of
murder wilfully carried out and morally justified by hatred of minorities,
misplaced power and bullying superiority,” Dodson said.
“In Gurindji country,
they talk of the Killing
Times.
“Mounted Constable
Willshire was stationed at Victoria River Downs in the 1890s. He was a mass
murderer in uniform, who took it upon himself to protect the interests of
cattlemen by dispersing the traditional owners of the lands at gunpoint.
“He took to print,
justifying his actions with boastful pride and emboldened by the rightness of
whiteness and condemned the First Nations’ people to death.
“Willshire wrote about
the killing on Wave Hill: ‘It’s no use mincing matters. The Martini-Henry
carbines at the critical moment were talking English in the silent majesty of
these eternal rocks.’”
Dodson said he has
walked through some of the sites
of mass murder in Australia with descendants of the victims and
“sometimes too with the descendants of murderers.”
“In South Australia I
visited a monument erected by both sides in the small community of Elliston to
commemorate the mass murder of men, women and children pushed over the steep
sea cliffs by charging horsemen and barking dogs.
“I have visited the
sites of massacres, of mass murders in Balgo, in Forrest
River, and at Coniston.
Those mass murders took place in living memory.
“I have sat down with
old Warlpiri men and women who luckily survived those murderous attacks as
young babies, hidden from the attacks.
“1928 was not that long
ago. My mother was just seven years old.
“But we are in 2019 now
and a mass murderer, rejecting the richness of difference, driven by religious
hatred and xenophobia, empowered by military-style weapons, has waged his
atrocity in Christchurch,” Dodson said.
“The murder of 50
innocent people does not just happen. It arises from the feeding of hate,
irresponsible language and the demonising of people of colour, and difference.
“We know, and senator
Anning knows, the real cause of the bloodshed in Christchurch. The real cause
was prejudice, hate, and a passion for violent action, aided and abetted by the
availability of military-style weapons.
“We call out those who
exploit fear and ignorance for political gain: who mock the traditional dress
of women of another culture; who seek
donations from the manufacturers of weapons of war to override our own laws;
who argue that it
is “alright to be white”.
“Their values would
plunge our country back into the Killing Times.
“We should instead turn
our face to the light of a new future, a peaceful, non-violent, tolerant
country of hope, respect and unity.
“A country where no
innocent man, women or child is ever again the victim of mass murder.”
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