I've grown up hearing various white-faced folk declaring various degrees of warmth or chilliness to what they call 'ethnics.' At school it was the kids who had caught the semi-white supremacism of the Pauline Hanson moment. I've also heard it on the lips of older people, usually referring to their Italian, Greek, French or Spanish-speaking neighbours. In church circles, 'ethnic' is often the nice euphemism for talking about a congregation that meets at some time other than the main Sunday service where English is not spoken.
Out in society at large, 'ethnic' has moved on from the old signification of asian people, who have been overtaken as a significant Other by different cultural groups, mostly Islamic. White Australian society seems to spend a lot of its public discourse finding a cultural Other against which to identify itself, never once thinking that it is itself an ethnic cultural identity. We are all foreigners, eventually.
The big gongs should be trashed
Reinstating knighthoods into the Order of Australia was Tony Abbott's step through the looking glass. The whole notion of orders of chivalry is risible. But giving one to Prince Philip simply beggars belief. I think there is a strong argument for throwing out the whole honours system as it stands, and starting again by remembering the reasons why the attempt to create an Australian peerage didn't work the first time round.
Reconciliation starts with justice
Constitutional recognition of the indigenous heritage of Australia is probably not going to work out on Tony Abbott's watch. This is a very frustrating and humiliating place for our society to be. Tony Abbott and his colleagues are too invested in the cultural conflict over land rights and pre-European history that the Liberal Party has cultivated over the last 20 years. The current government lacks the cultural vision and the moral centre to do anything more than an empty symbolic gesture. Doing that would be worse than doing nothing.
Here is a better start to the conversation:
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