Officialdom’s Latest Change-by-Stealth: Renaming Seat of Franklin, By Tony Abbott
One reason many Australians are uneasy about the direction of our country is officialdom's rush to make key changes without meaningful public input, either from voters or their elected representatives. For instance, when did any elected government make a formal decision to almost double Australia's immigration intake, to fly three flags rather than one on all government buildings, or to begin all civic events with acknowledgments of "country"? The Australian people have never been asked for their views on any of these developments despite their immense significance for the future and how we see ourselves as a nation.
Effectively, these changes have been made by the administrative state and then treated as "done deals" that could be questioned only by cultural troglodytes. This sense that far-reaching change has been foisted on a public that's been kept in the dark helps to explain the rise of conspiracy theories and increasing support for previously fringe political movements.
The latest example of officialdom's tendency to push change-by-stealth that alters how we see ourselves as Australians, is the sudden push to rename the Tasmanian federal electorate of Franklin, a federation seat, so-called after an early governor, later the famed-if-ill-starred Arctic explorer, after the Aboriginal warrior Tongerlongeter. This change was announced on Wednesday with the public given scarcely five working days to make submissions-in-response by midnight next Tuesday. The Australian Electoral Commission will then hold one day of public consultation at the end of the month before finalising its decision. …
Quite apart from the fact that important symbolic decisions should not be rushed, there are two key problems with renaming the seat of Franklin after Tongerlongeter. First, it's against the AEC's standard procedure that's to preserve the names of seats that have existed since the time of Federation. Second, and much more important, if Batman has been retired as the name of a federal parliamentary seat, because of his unsavoury personal conduct, isn't it a double standard now to commemorate in this way Tongerlongeter, whose many casualties (understandably enough under the circumstances) included women and children? …
https://www.tonyabbott.au/p/officialdoms-latest-change-by-stealth
