Anthony Albanese and Labor are embracing so called “progressive patriotism” in response to rising support for One Nation and the far right.
Albanese now constantly appeals to “my fellow Australians” in the hope of connecting with voters.
Labor says it wants a more inclusive nationalism that incorporates multicultural and migrant groups.
South Australia’s Labor Premier Peter Malinauskus celebrated his election win last month by quoting a Henry Lawson poem about welcoming “the new chum” arriving as a migrant from overseas. “Australians should be patriotic and can be proud of what our nation stands for”, he said, pointing to “diversity” as a key part of this.
This follows Albanese’s efforts to claim the government backs “progressive patriotism”.
But Labor’s embrace of nationalism only feeds racist ideas and helps the far right.
Its celebration of diversity doesn’t go very far. Labor continues to demand that migrants show loyalty to Australia’s rulers and accept national institutions.
Labor MP Julian Hill, Assistant Minister for Multicultural Affairs and apparently part of Labor’s Left faction, set this out in a speech in February. It wants “multicultural communities who love Australia, have integrated and want to belong”, he said. Part of this is accepting “our flag, our national day and institutions”.
Behind this is the idea that there are “good migrants” who are prepared to assimilate and “bad migrants” who won’t. This only encourages the racist idea that there are problems with immigration.
Albanese has stirred racism against migrants through his attacks on protests for Palestine, claiming they were “undermining social cohesion” and demanding “people don’t seek to bring conflict… here”.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke railed against “anger and hatred from around the world being imported into Australia”. Progressive patriotism is linked to a conservative push for social cohesion that vilfies Muslims, Arabs, and opponents of Israel’s genocide.
This has fuelled the far right, with the March for Australia rallies demanding an end to the flying of “foreign flags” and speakers declaring the Palestine marches were full of “foreign protesters”.
The government’s attacks on Muslim “hate preachers” after the Bondi attack fed into the wave of Islamophobia blaming the Muslim community.
Albanese also says that his “progressive patriotism” embraces “Australian values” like kindness and fairness, and claimed these are driving the government’s policies.
But there was no kindness in Albanese’s blunt refusal of any assistance for the former Islamic State wives and their young children in Syria who are Australian citizens.
There was no fairness in passing laws to cancel visas already granted to Iranians to stop them travelling here when the war broke out.
Albanese has also accepted the racist argument that migrants and international students are to blame for the housing crisis.
Australian nationalism will always have a racist core. Its bedrock remains the white Australia nationalism that was based on maintaining the “racial purity” of the white population.
Australia remains an outpost of Western imperialism in Asia built on the dispossession of Aboriginal people. It continues to demand allegiance to the imperialist state.
Nationalism
Australian nationalism is not progressive. Often it is used to call on workers to accept sacrifices and cuts to living standards, as over the oil crisis.
Albanese’s address to the nation saw him appeal to “the Australian way” of helping each other as a solution. He later said the government was “Putting our faith in the practicality—and patriotism—of Australians”.
Nationalism presents all members of the nation as sharing a common interest. This serves to hide the fundamental class divide.
Australia is a starkly unequal society. The number of people who can afford to buy a home is plummeting, with the gap between incomes and housing prices exploding.
The cost of living crisis has seen real wages drop almost 4 per cent since 2020.
But those at the top of society have seen their wealth soar. The top 10 per cent now get 35.2 per cent of all income and hold 57.7 per cent of the wealth. Australia’s big banks posted profits of $43 billion last year, while mining companies exported $130 billion worth of coal and gas.
This comes at the expense of the rest of us. Wage rises for workers or tax increases to fund public services both cut into company profits.
Gas companies are making huge profits on exports. Santos paid no company tax or royalties in the last ten years on $47 billion in sales.But they are viciously opposed to any tax increase.
Albanese constantly takes the side of business—attacking militant unions like the CFMEU, allowing the expansion of fossil fuel projects on Indigenous land and failing to tax wealthy housing investors or the rich.
He wants to wrap himself in nationalism to cover the class divide. This will only encourage racism and further boost One Nation.
By James Supple
