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AUSTRALIA

All eyes on our MH17 mourners in chief

  • 28 July 2014
Our national mourning following the MH17 airline tragedy is spontaneous and scattered but also requires leadership. Some individuals must inevitably become mourners-in-chief because of the positions they hold.

The way we mourn provides perspectives not just on these individuals but also, more importantly, insights into our cultural understandings and national institutions. The current tragedy provides some opportunity to reflect on ourselves as a nation, though unusually, unlike a natural disaster, this one is such a potent mixture of international politics and grief. It is more like a wartime tragedy than one brought on by a devastating earthquake or fire.

Leading national mourning is primarily a job for our elected or appointed leaders. This means Prime Ministers and Premiers and Governors-General and Governors. At St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney Tony and Margaret Abbott were flanked in the front row by Sir Peter and Lady Cosgrove on their right and Dame Marie Bashir, Governor of New South Wales, on their left. Opposition Leaders, like Bill Shorten, take their place but are largely ignored.  The State Opposition Leaders hardly matter at all. This has clear political implications.

Our style of our mourning also clearly reflects our federal nation. The reporting of the Australian deaths was almost immediately based around categorising the deaths by state. The number of Victorians, Queenslanders, and so on, became highly important. This simple point shows how we see ourselves. The dead were not calculated by gender, ethnicity or city/country but definitely by state. Capital city-based media followed up accordingly.

This regional emphasis meant that state premiers were afforded a high profile on the breaking news and almost treated as the equivalent of our national leaders. Strikingly one of the earliest to make a televised public statement was Campbell Newman, Premier of Queensland, who spoke particularly of the impact of the tragedy on his fellow Queenslanders.  Later Dennis Napthine, Premier of Victoria, followed Newman, though he did play an additional role as the political leader of the state hosting the big international HIV/AIDS conference, handling the associated questions related to that conference.

But as something above party politics national mourning constitutionally should generally be led by Heads of State not Heads of Government, though we are somewhat confused about these roles. Having a monarch represented by a Governor-General complicates relationships. In this instance the Governor-General has played a secondary role to the Prime Minister. This is perhaps explicable, given the mix of international politics and
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