This is Australia?

I don’t recognise this Australia. From where did it hail?

The Australia I have come to admire is one of the world’s wealthiest nations; rich in spirit and resources; a country that takes almost childish pride in its generosity of spirit, its good humour, its open-heartedness and its willingness to look after the underdog. It is the Australia that is always willing to extend a hand to the desperate and the needy. As the second verse of that song they sing at football matches goes, it’s the Australia that says “for those who come across the seas, we’ve boundless plains to share”.

But I don’t hear that Australia on the radio anymore. I don’t hear that Australia in the carefully chosen and calculated phrases of the politicians or in the sophistry of the newspaper editorialists. Instead, that hedged, constricted and concocted language reveals a fearful country turning in on itself and shrinking from the world, losing the very qualities that for more than two centuries made it a magnet for those seeking better lives – including the families of our political leaders Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard.

This is the still half-formed and  insecure Australia of the little recited fifth verse of that anthem, the one that pumps out its puny adolescent chest and proclaims: “Should foreign foe e’er sight our coast,or dare a foot to land, we’ll rouse to arms like sires of yore to guard our native strand”.

This is the Old Testament punitive Australia, small and scared and spiteful and unforgiving; an Australia that would quibble over the $300,000 cost of a funeral for people whose desperation was such they lost their lives seeking refuge here.

I don’t like this Australia much and I don’t think its crude representation by ingratiating politicians and radio talkback hosts and ranting journalists – and all the other clever second guessers who presume to know the national soul – is a fair reflection of the reality.

The real Australia has a big heart and an open mind. It is a New Testament country, where there is always enough to go around.  Whether you are a literal believer or not, the parable of Jesus feeding thousands of people with a handful of loaves and fish tells us about the self-regenerating power of spiritual sustenance and inclusiveness.  Our riches grow and our souls expand by sharing our land and welcoming the dispossessed and grieving and orphaned.

I believe our politics are debased and corrupted, that our national politicians have forgotten how to lead. Overwhelmingly and with few exceptions, they are glory-seeking careerists, believing in nothing and mouthing phrases aimed at appeasing the worst in us, as expressed in inwardly-looking ‘focus’ groups and the spleen-venting anonymity of talkback radio. This is a place where it is all about what we want and not about what we can give.

I think we can cleanse a poisoned atmosphere by each donating $5 toward the cost of this funeral and taking it out of the hands of the politicians and a camp-following media that refuses to call a spade a spade. At that price, it would take take only 60,000 people – about half of one percent of the working population – to raise the requisite $300,000.

Yes, it is a symbolic gesture. And it won’t cost a lot. But it feels to me like a simple and powerful way of signalling that we are bigger and nobler than the small and fearful Australia now being reflected back to us through a distorted media mirror.

(As a practical first step, can I suggest someone set up a bank account under a registered charity?)

• Annabel Crabb:Putting the Alpenhorn into Dog Whistling (The Drum)
• Ben Pobjie: You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down (New Matilda)
• Malcolm Fraser: Multiculturalism hasn’t Failed, But the Liberal Party has (Crikey)