The political agenda of the Australia Day Council

[Contributed article]

Is there a leftist agenda at work within the Australia Day Council?

It has been alleged that the Australia Day Council has been seeking to push the ideological agenda of the so-called left, by promoting individuals more on the basis of their political leanings, minority status, or connection to a cause, rather than on their merits alone.

For example, it takes no great stretch of the imagination to realise that the awarding of the Australian of the Year award to Tim Flannery in 2007 was a way of promoting the left-activist causes re. green environmentalism and global warming.

Certainly, most of the people chosen by the Australia Day Council deserve an award. That is not being disputed here. However, we are all well aware that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of people in Australia who do great work. Every one of them deserve an award, but if political or ideological bias plays a part in choosing which one of the hundreds of potential worthy recipients is finally chosen, then that is just plain wrong.

Now, we could argue back and forth for hours about which recipients of the Australian of the Year award were given the award as part of leftist bias. It can be a bit hard to quantify.

However, leftists love to promote their favoured minority groups, such as ethnic minorities, Aborigines, homosexuals, feminists, etc. Now, that sort of bias can be easily assessed.

So, let’s look at an easily-quantifiable measurement. How many Aborigines were given the Australian of the Year award, as compared to their proportion of the population?

Now, before the leftists start bleating about anti-Aboriginal racism, that is not the case at all. This is a scrutiny of the Australia Day Council and their political-ideological agenda, not a scrutiny of Aborigines. There are many Aborigines who deserve awards (as well as people from other ethnic-racial backgrounds, too), that is not being questioned. What is being questioned is whether the Australia Day Council has a political-ideological agenda; and the Aboriginal component of the Australian of the Year awards list is something that can be measured without dispute.

Since 1960, there have been 58 recipients of the Australian of the Year award (including some occasional co-recipients). As the Aboriginal proportion of the population is 3%, we can reasonably expect that 1.5% of the recipients (1 or 2 award winners) would be Aborigines. If you want to make the statistical analysis more exact, by looking at the last 50 recipients, the proportion still works out the same.

Therefore, we are expecting to find just 1 or 2 Aborigines on the list of Australians of the Year. So, how many are there? Here are the Aboriginal Australians of the Year:
Lionel Rose (1968)
Evonne Goolagong (1971)
Galarrwuy Yunupingu (1978)
Neville Bonner (1979)
Lowitja O’Donoghue (1984)
Mandawuy Yunupingu (1992)
Cathy Freeman (1998)
Mick Dodson (2009)
Adam Goodes (2014)

That is a list of 9 people, quite a bit of a distance from the statistically expected 3% (or 1.5 people); instead of 3%, it is a result of 18%, that is 6 times (600%) the statistically expected level. It is doubtful that this disproportionate amount is just some kind of accident. A 200% bias (of 6%) could be dismissed as a statistical aberration, but a 600% bias in favour of one particular group in society? Really? Did they think people wouldn’t notice?

It is not the case that, in those particular years, no other Australians existed who were as worthy. For a start, there are thousands of volunteer fire fighters, medical personnel, animal aid workers, carers for the elderly, etc.; there are many people in our country who put in thousands of hours and devote their lives to the care of others in an altruistic manner, without political agendas being involved. There is no lack of worthy people in Australia.

The disproportionate bias displayed in the Australian of the Year awards shows that something is amiss at the Australia Day Council.

A quote from a newspaper article about the Australia Day Council offers a confirmation of the political agenda involved:

“the award seemed to be less about honouring good deeds than promoting the fashionable causes or politics of the cultural elite. ABC broadcaster Phillip Adams boasted that as head of the Australia Day Council he’d chosen Leftists “who would discompose calcified conservatives”.”

Just to make it clear, for the umpteenth time, this is not a criticism of worthy Aborigines, this is a criticism of the Australia Day Council, who are abusing their office by pushing their own ideological agenda, whether that is to push multiculturalism, promote the “land rights” agenda, or enhance the status of minorities. The disproportionate giving of awards to people on the basis of their ethnicity is wrong, and possibly even “racist”.

It’s high time something was done about it; the ideological bias and political misuse of the Australia Day Council needs to be properly investigated.

References:
“List of Australian of the Year Award recipients”, Wikipedia
“Indigenous Australians”, Wikipedia
“3238.0.55.001 – Estimates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, June 2011”, Australian Bureau of Statistics
“Leave recognition of Australia’s best to the people”, Herald Sun, 28 January 2013 (Andrew Bolt)