Go ahead and read this article in The Age. Now try not to throw up in your mouth a little.

Just as Bush told the United States that the war in Iraq was ‘over’, so our Prime Minister is here to tell us that the “culture wars” have been won. The time for “divisive, phoney debate about national identity” is apparently over. This in a year of race riots, publicised executions, needless war and yet more asylum seeker controversy. But the PM says the war is over; we can stop talking about it now.

He also wants us to know that history is being taught incorrectly in schools. They shouldn’t question our nation’s “objective record of achievement”; instead they should glorify “the great and enduring heritage of Western civilisation, those nations that became the major tributaries of European settlement”. Nevermind that discourse is the key to historical study; nevermind the old spectre of colonial shame. The PM says the war is won.

Our Prime Minister is happy because statistics show that fewer Australians are ashamed of our nation’s past, a past which - aside from certain military actions in the Great War and Second World War - is blackened irreparably by xenophobia, isolationism and fawning obeisance to other Western countries. But the PM says we should all forget; the war has been won.

Well, fuck that.

There are people out there who aren’t so willing to surrender the cultural battlefield to this new, more paranoid Australia. Fuck giving up debate for the sake of national identity. Fuck giving up privacy for the sake of security.

As long as Australian culture continues to champion infantilism and ignorance, the cultural war will be necessary. How like a tyrant to declare the war over before it has even begun.

Happy Australia Day.