Opinion
The Hidden Truth in Hockey’s Book
Australia’s Treasurer Joe Hockey’s authorized biography has attracted much interest, including a peak into Cabinet relationships, the budget, and future leadership contenders.
Yet there is one issue that has snuck firmly under the radar, and goes to Australia’s moral fabric: the denial of the first genocide of the 20th century.
Already a subscriber?Log in here
This story is FREE for you...
Create a free account to access this and four more articles, and get more sent to you with our e-newsletter.By submitting your email address you agree for Hairenik Association, Inc. to send you communication by email.
Australia will be one of the last countries to recognise the genocide in spite of always being selectively vocal on moral and justice issues. Can you imagine the courage a sitting Australian government has to have to face an angry public when the Turks bar ordinary Australians from visiting Gallipoli as a retaliatory measure because their government has chosen to recognize a genocide on people they haven’t even heard of.
In reading the article above be mindful that all aspects of this history are disputed … here are Australians celebrating their version of Gallipoli, a 100 years on, to the exclusion of others. How far away we are from the real horrors of going into wars wearing blinkers (i.e. Iraq). One thing is sure, you will not hear the current Australian Treasurer, Joe Hockey, talking of the Armenian genocide on ABC TV even though his family were Armenian (and Palestinian). Joe Hockey’s fellow cabinet members just do not want to know about what happened despite his attempts to reveal the nature of the genocide in his autobiography. Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop recently asserted, “We do not, however, recognize these events as ‘genocide.’” Their heads are firmly in the sand despite the atrocities on the beaches at ANZAC cove. They will not even recognise the ongoing stolen generation and want to advance the colonial project even further out to aboriginal communities in WA, SA and the NT.
Yet again, our government chooses political expediency over the moral imperative. Bishop’s position (and one must believe, that of her leader Abbot and the appatchiks of DFAT, is hypocritical and deceiptful. So, of course, is Obama’s in not being willing to re-state his earlier-stated convictions. And politicians wonder why the populace at large holds them in such contempt? Hockey, no idealist certainly (as his insensitive and hierarchical budget shows), here has a very personal reason for sticking to his guns. He does deserve credit for going against his party’s public line, but that credit must be mitigated by the knowledge that it is born of personal investment in history, not our of honour or idealism. What we need in this country is very simple, some politicians who will stand up publicly and state the truth about matters, the Armenian genocide among them. NOT because it is fashionable, or politically or economically expedient, but just because it is TRUE and cannot be denied by any honourable person.