On 21 August I came out of an Adelaide preview of The Australian Dream, Stan Grant's documentary about the racialised mistreatment of the former AFL footballer Adam Goodes, for a brief interview on our local ABC's Evening Show. The topic: the resumption of federal government visibility and determination to both deposit and dump nuclear waste in either the Flinders Ranges or Kimba regions.
Later I reflected on this synergy. One of these threatened areas was the location for The Australian Dream's dramatic opening panoramic shot: Adam Goodes, a tiny figure in a vast landscape, with the Ranges of his ancestors in majestic background.
The Australian Dream arrives in cinemas following what the Koori Mail named its television 'companion piece' — The Final Quarter. Both films, with scenarios largely confined to AFL ovals and the television studios of Australian commentators, are high on violence: violent words from individual commentators, violent boos, mob violence. Even for the spectator, the violence becomes horrifying; the relentlessness of the continued booing and the viturpation of the usual suspect commentators — all directed at one man. As Grant summarised, 'They hounded that man, hounded him into submission.'
I wonder sometimes if this kind of vehement rage towards certain persons has parallels with the attitude and actions of some among us 'latecomers' to this country, to the country itself. It shows itself in a determination to exploit the country, to commodify it, to rape it of its resources; all done with entirely no regard for the consequences — on lands, on precious waters and eventually on all of us, the human race, who rely on creation for our survival.
There is at best exasperation, and at worst, genuine anger shown to many Australians seeking to defend country: to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander defenders certainly. In regard to non-Aboriginal people, the word 'greenie' has become largely a term of derision. Certainly a commentator like Andrew Bolt makes the easy switch from his sustained attacks on Goodes and other Aboriginal heroes to derisive comments on 16 year old environmentalist Greta Thunberg.
The Flinders became a place of healing refuge for Goodes. Yet the glory of its incredible antiquity has not been enough to shame the Minister and the Department for Industry, Innovation and Science (DIIS) in the four-year journey of seriously considering this place of ancestry, beauty, earthquakes and floods as host to Australia's nuclear waste which will remain dangerous for 10,000 years. Neither