When Tony Abbott said of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy that 'a lot has changed since [its establishment in 1972] ... it is probably time to move on from that', he wouldn't have expected the violent repercussions, nor would he have been aware — it seems safe to say — of their Australian provenance. The phrase 'moving on' is fraught with ambiguities and distracting baggage.
On 19 March 2003, President George W. Bush launched 'Operation Iraqi Freedom', an attack justified by the conviction that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a repository of a vast cache of what came to be known as 'Weapons of Mass Destruction', or WMD. Later, when the idea of the existence of large scale WMD became untenable, the rationale for the war subtly altered to 'regime change'.
In the US and Britain opposition to the war was fierce. Amid widespread protests and demonstrations, British Ministry of Defence biological warfare expert, David Kelly, cast doubt on the government's 'sexed up' WMD dossier in interviews with BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan. He attracted vigorous official and unofficial objections, the strain and ignominy of which, it seems, drove him to suicide.
Meanwhile, in the US opposition to the war was widespread, vocal and occasionally violent.
From Australians, however, Prime Minister Howard encountered no such reaction. In London, a British journalist asked Howard to explain how Australia had escaped pretty well unscathed by the tumult and outrage that had erupted in America and Britain about non-existent WMDs, when he was as deeply engaged in and totally supportive of the views of his northern hemisphere colleagues.
Howard's answer was: 'Because Australians have moved on.'
I remember the journalist's bewilderment — and my own. What did 'move on' mean? When you moved on were you simply ducking the issue, leaving it behind unresolved? On what ethical or philosophical grounds could one move on from a question as serious and as deadly (remember poor David Kelly for one thing) as WMD without having come to any resolution one way or the other?
I didn't feel as if I'd moved on, nor did many other Australians. What signs was Howard detecting that told him about our moving on?
Yet the phrase is ubiquitous. When Teresa Gambaro, the Coalition citizenship spokeswoman,