When UK expat and young mum Jessica Green stood up at her Australian citizenship ceremony at Sydney’s Petersham Town Hall a few weeks ago to sing the national anthem, something quite bizarre happened.
It didn’t have anything to do with her singing (although she says she hates singing). A few “suggested videos” popped up on the big screen near the new Aussie citizens when the YouTube clip playing the national anthem finished. One of which was the Nazi national anthem.
“Everyone was staring at it, like: are you serious?” Jessica laughs. “That was slightly awkward.”
Otherwise, she says, it was a really nice ceremony. People of all backgrounds, many dressed in green and gold and some draped in the Australian flag, pledged their allegiance to Australia. In ceremonies like this year-round, people who have successfully completed the mountains of paperwork and passed the test required to become a citizen take an oath of loyalty to Australia. And now a prominent Gillard Government minister has floated the idea of getting kids to take the same pledge of citizenship at school.
“American kids pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and all that it represents; so should Australian children know and understand our nation’s citizenship pledge,” the Social Inclusion Minister Tanya Plibersek said in a speech to the Sydney Institute, The Sydney Morning Herald reported yesterday.
Plibersek said the pledge people should know should be the same one taken by new immigrants like Jessica. At Petersham that day, Jessica pledged her fidelity to Australia, it’s laws, liberties and democratic values. All Australians should know that pledge, said Plibersek.
Some countries conduct oaths of loyalty in schools. Many US states encourage (and some require) kids to take a pledge of allegiance to “the flag of the United States of America” at school.
But what would - or should - an Aussie pledge of allegiance consist of? Should we even have one?
Some disagree with Plibersek. For instance, David Flint, the Emeritus Professor and national convenor of Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy, says a pledge for all Australians should be more like another Aussie oath of loyalty.
“We have an oath of allegiance which [Plibersek] pledged, swore and affirmed…The oath of allegiance to the Crown,” says Flint. “It should refer to the Queen and it should also refer to the flag.”
He says a pledge of allegiance shouldn’t just be to the monarchy, but to Australia’s fundamental institutions. And he makes it very clear what he thinks shouldn’t be included in a pledge.
“I don’t think it should refer to our indigenous heritage which has its place but it’s not central to the Commonwealth. It’s not one of the institutions of Australia.
“It should not be filled with the current fashion – multiculturalism is a current fashion – I think you just have to have a simple one,” he says. “Back in the 1900s they could have had a pledge to the White Australia policy, they didn’t, thankfully.”
Flint raises an important question: couldn’t a pledge exclude, instead of include? Plibersek says such patriotic gestures should be inclusive. At Cronulla a few years ago we saw patriotic symbols become the weapons of a small, angry, shirtless minority.
The “pledge of allegiance” has been a divisive issue in the United States, Associate Professor Brendon O’Connor from the United States Studies Centre at Sydney University points out.
During the 1988 presidential election campaign, the Massachusetts governor and Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis came under attack for vetoing a pledge of allegiance bill. Questions were raised as to whether Dukakis was patriotic enough to be president and whether he really “believed in the American flag”.
“[His opponent] George Bush Senior went to flag factories and suggested he was someone identified closely with the pledge and the flag,” says O’Connor.
“In many ways it was a jingoistic kind of argument about relative levels of patriotism, relative levels of commitment to American ideals. It was trying to portray Dukakis as not truly committed the US military and government.”
And it’s not just American political types who’ve come under attack for dissenting on the pledge.
Florida student Cameron Frazier refused to recite the pledge twice in his maths class in 2005. His teacher labelled him “un-American” and he was removed from his class. (Frazier then successfully sued the local school-board for $32,500).
It’s clear that an Australian oath of loyalty could be used to unite—but it could be used just as easily to divide. So I asked someone who’s had a lot of experience with pledges what she thought of everyone joining her in taking the oath.
After eight years in Australia, much of that as a permanent resident, Jessica Green felt compelled to become a fully-fledged citizen when her bub Charlie joined her in the world as an Australian citizen not long ago. Jessica says the pledge she took was important.
“I guess it was quite nice doing it in that context, it was a meaningful occasion.”
“There’s a time and a place for everything – maybe for sporting events and other appropriate things,” she says. “But I’m not sure what the value would be doing it routinely, on a daily basis.”
What do you think?
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