Love, Actually

Let me tell you a story about a cheating wife' Imagine that for a moment - and yeah, that happens too. They were just an ordinary couple, He worked hard to provide, and she stayed at home to look after the two and a half bratty kids. Then she fell for the Pool Boy, because she was bored and he was hot. But hubby came home early to surprise her and suddenly got an insight he didn't need. Arguments ensued: he beat up the pool boy and shoved the wife. She slapped him and cried very loudly. But eventually things settled down, and they continued to live in the house.

What can she possible DO to UNDO that injustice? It happened. You can kiss and make up and move on - or not. The Marriage Counsellor suggested that making her wait by the door to welcome him home every night, would be a way for her to show her respect, and it would be good for his ego, and he would have to kiss her hello.

What do you think of the marriage counsellor's advice. Do you think it will undo the cheating? Or do you think it will make her resentful, and it remind him of the reason why she is doing it. It doesn't really matter who is at 'fault' - it may well be the husband's absence and violent temper that drove her into the arms of another man, or she could have just been a slut.

The point is: forcing one person to perform a ritual, cannot undo the damage, and it is highly unlikely that it will cure the relationship.

And the performative ritual of 'welcome to country' is not really that different.

(Watch the video below)

My church, on Sunday before Australia Day 2026, had a sideways 'acknowledgement to country' designed not to offend those who wanted it or those who don't believe it belongs in the house of God. Whether acknowledging country is something for a sermon is another article for another time.

I resist Welcome to Country or Acknowledgement of Country rituals, and I don’t do so out of ignorance, hostility, or lack of respect. I am not hedging my bets or offering disguised criticism: as a practising Christian, I truly believe that 'all men are equal before God', and I truly believe this 'ritual' does more harm than good for Aboriginal people specifically and society generally.

I reject these rituals because I believe they are a modern political practice that creates division, reinforces grievance, and delivers no measurable benefit to anyone—Indigenous or otherwise.

The liberal Australians who walk in lockstep with the 'invasion day' narrative and WTC ceremonies may have persuaded themselves that they are doing good, but they are patronising Aboriginal people (intentionally or not). Much like the liberals who claim Voter ID would disadvantage black people - as if they are illiterate or incapable of applying and getting their ID.

The Aboriginal people may believe that such a ceremony forces the 'white guy coloniser' to recognise their proper place. The truth of the matter is that it costs those who comply nothing It has the opposite effect on half the population, and makes the other half feel virtuous without having to pay for it.

This view is one that is increasingly difficult to express publicly, because if you do you are cast as a 'right winger'. But it is one that needs to be expressed.

A Modern Practice Masquerading as Ancient Tradition

Despite how these ceremonies are often presented, the way Welcome to Country is practised today is not an ancient, continuous tradition stretching back tens of thousands of years. It is a modern protocol, formalised largely in the late 20th century and expanded rapidly over the last two decades—particularly within government, corporate, sporting and educational institutions. (I believe Ernie Dingo - media personality was the architect in the 70s, but I am not sure.)

This matters, because the authority of the practice is routinely defended by implying timelessness. But in reality, many Aboriginal people themselves will tell you that formal welcomes at routine civic or corporate events were not historically common, and that the current version is a contemporary adaptation layered with political meaning.

And the proof is in the pudding: does any Aboriginal person, travelling across the state, participate in any 'acknowledgement' rituals as they traverse the various tribal lands?

More importantly, it is not universally practised or even supported by Aboriginal Australians. Indigenous communities are not a single voice, and many elders and commentators have questioned the frequency, commercialisation, and symbolic emptiness of these rituals. That diversity of opinion is rarely acknowledged - at least not in the mainstream press.

Finally, as a church goer, I like rituals. I get the value of rituals. And having some knowledge and experience in psychology, I can also tell you that this ritual, does no good at all

What Problem Is This Supposed to Solve?

Supporters of Welcome to Country often struggle to articulate a concrete outcome. We are told it is about “respect,” “awareness,” or “healing.” But these are abstractions, not results.

There is no credible evidence that repeating ritual acknowledgements:

After decades of expansion, Indigenous Australians still face profound disadvantage. Meanwhile, Welcome to Country has become more frequent, not less—suggesting the ritual persists independently of results.

This is where the paradox emerges: a practice that claims to heal division survives precisely because division remains.

The Incentive to Preserve Grievance

There is a well-known principle in organisational theory: when an institution is built to address a problem, it often becomes invested in the problem continuing. Without grievance, the ritual loses relevance. (The Shirky Principle.)

Welcome to Country institutionalises a permanent moral imbalance: one group welcomes, another is perpetually welcomed. One is positioned as custodian, the other as guest—regardless of citizenship, contribution, or generational distance from colonisation.

This framing does not foster unity. It entrenches difference.

It subtly communicates that belonging is conditional and historical guilt is inherited. That message may be unspoken, but it is unmistakable.

The Fiction of Collective Responsibility

Colonisation cannot be undone. Every person who carried it out, and every person directly harmed by it, is long dead. Yet modern Australians—many of whom arrived generations later or migrated from entirely different parts of the world—are routinely asked to symbolically account for events in which they played no part.

I reject the idea that moral responsibility is hereditary. And this applies to slavery too.

No just society functions by assigning guilt or entitlement based on ancestry, and especially not on skin colour. Doing so replaces individual equality with permanent group identity—and that is not reconciliation. It is regression.

And yes, there are 'white' examples of this approach that equally condemn. Jews have extracted reparations from Germany. Since formal negotiations began in the early 1950s, the German government has paid roughly $90 billion–$95 billion USD in indemnification and compensation to Jewish Holocaust survivors and their families for suffering and losses under the Nazis. The so-called Claims Conferences still exists today. Antisemitism is still rife. The Jews still have not forgiven, irrespective of admission, ritual or even reparation.

History Is Not a Morality Play

Every nation on earth was shaped by conquest, migration, and displacement. Australia is not unique in this regard. What is unusual is the insistence that colonisation be framed as an unambiguous moral failure, stripped of complexity or consequence.

Modern Australia—with its infrastructure, medicine, legal system, technology, and freedoms—is inseparable from its history. The ability to publicly criticise colonisation itself exists only because of the society that emerged from it. Colonisation brought civilisation, progress.

What would be the alternative? Without colonisation you wouldn't have had the tools (like TV or the internet) to complain about civilisation, and if you are over 40 years old, you probably wouldn't have been alive long enough to complain about colonisation.

I am not justifying or ignoring any past injustices - but I am questioning the likelihood of these performative rituals ever contributing to a solution. There is simply no solution that can wind back that the clock.

Acknowledging this reality is not denial. It is honesty.

From Respect to Ritual Fatigue

Repetition has drained Welcome to Country of meaning. When it opens board meetings, school assemblies, sporting matches, award nights, Zoom calls, and internal memos, it becomes a reflex—not a reflection.

Many people now recite acknowledgements without listening, without believing them, and without understanding them. That is not respect. It is compliance.

And forced symbolism breeds resentment—not because people are hostile, but because they are tired of being instructed on how to feel. If the marriage of the couple in my opening analogy survives, it will be because there was some dialogue that led to a change of heart, not because she was instructed to ritualistically wait for him by the door every night.

Respect is a two-way Street

I'd be the first to admit that there are 'bogans' to there who are just plain disrespectful of other cultures. It is not remotely of the same scale, but as an immigrant I get to experience that disrespect in a small measure too - so I know it is real.

But if we looked at the debates around Australia Day and Welcome to Country and Colonialism and Aboriginal suffering and so forth, the conversations are decidedly one sided. And, since we are being honest here, I cannot say that I can track or trace anywhere, anyone calling on Aboriginals to respect White and Asian Australians more, can you? I have never seen a newspaper headline calling on Aboriginal people to respect (other) Australians.

What Unity Actually Requires

If the goal is unity, then the path forward is obvious—and it does not involve forced rituals.

Unity comes from:

We do not build a shared future by endlessly re-litigating the past. We build it by deciding what binds us now. So, if you care, and if you want to really fix this, specifically if you are Aboriginal, the only option is to engage constructively with the people to find solutions. It is not productive to simply attempt to extract more benefits, and more preferential treatment and more acknowledgement and more apologies and more, more, more...

Love cannot be commanded - as our couple illustrates. And respect is not only earned, but also only sustained if it is mutual.

Conclusion

Welcome to Country has evolved into a divisive, performative practice that reinforces difference rather than dissolving it. It is modern, political, inconsistently supported—even within Indigenous communities—and unconnected to tangible improvement in anyone’s life.

I don’t oppose respect - which cuts both ways - but I do oppose ritualised division disguised as virtue.

If reconciliation is to mean anything, it must move beyond symbolism and toward something far more difficult, far more honest—and far more unifying. In its present form it is an obstacle and needs to be scrapped.