Opposition leader Tony Abbott says:

”It would help to bolster public support for immigration and acceptance of social diversity if more minority leaders were as ready to show to mainstream Australians values the respect they demand for their own,” he told an Australia Day function in Melbourne last night.

He said for all the misguided and sometimes cruel treatment of Aborigines, the ethnic typecasting and occasional snobbery that still existed, Australia had rarely seen domestic discrimination based on race or culture.

Is Abbott stupid, or just plain lying?

Or is there, perhaps, something else in operation here, something at a different psychological level? Perhaps this ‘forgetting’ of racism is actually a repression, both personal and cultural, an attempt to sweep an ‘unacceptable idea’ under the carpet in order to preserve a fragile, narcissistic image of ourselves. The idea of racism is still unacceptable, as Australia is yet to have ‘worked through’ the bloody, traumatic aspects of its history (and present). So many on the Right still regard the mere admission of racism in Australia’s past as a kind of ’self-hatred’ or some such.

Bringing such things is all the more urgent when, a few days out from Australia Day, the Herald Sun is attempting to drum up ill-feeling in response to the manufacture of halal Vegemite:

Muslim leaders have congratulated Kraft for introducing the labels, but Family Council of Victoria secretary Bill Muehlenberg questioned the company’s motives.

“This is a private company trying to make money,” Mr Muehlenberg said. “I don’t think they care a rip about offending the tastebuds of Muslims.

“Why do we have to keep bending over backwards to please minority groups? There are only 300,000 Muslims in Australia out of 22 million people, which is a very small percentage.

“Of course, there’s a case for making allowances for different cultures, but aren’t we getting a bit carried away with political correctness here? It’s ridiculous.”

Mr Muehlenberg feared the halal labelling was also a sign of “Islamisation” of western countries.

It’s not very clear why somebody representing a ‘Family Council’ needs to comment on Vegemite’s marketing decisions. What is clear is that Vegemite has already been Kosher for years (apart from a brief period in 2004), and the only objections were from Stormfront and other fringe-dwellers from the conspiracist, wanna-be fascist crowd. This is the company kept by our man from the ‘Family Council’. It is precisely this evidence of racism, as old as it is entrenched within Australia, that Mr Abbott finds so objectionable that he must deny it altogether. But the cost of repression is neurosis, and that is what we see in the Australia of today, and we will have no clearer example than the young people who, on the 26th of this month, will drunkenly brandish flags and slogans, whilst older heads among the commentariat fervently inform us that Australia is not racist, has never been racist.