The ABC Does More Narrm than Good

I know we can’t expect too much these days in the way of mail delivery services by Australia Post.  They now have bigger fish to fry.  But you would expect they might be able to locate the address of the single largest media conglomerate in Australia.  I’m talking, of course about the ABC.  But apparently not.  On June 11 I sent a letter to ABC Chairman Kim Williams.  On June 30 I still had not any acknowledgement of my letter, so I emailed the ABC.  On July 4 I was advised that:

Thank you for getting in touch.  The Chair’s Office has advised that they did not receive a letter [Shame on you Australia Post]. If you have an electronic copy which you could send to me by reply email, I would be happy to pass it along to the Chair.

This I duly did and when I had not heard anything by July 16, I sent a follow-up, and again on July 18. Seven days later I still had heard nothing, so I re-sent the letter this time as a registered post. Wouldn’t you know it, I had barely got home when I received this email ($6.50 down the gurgler):

Dear Mr O’Brien,

Thank you for your letter and my apologies you have not received an adequate response.

I am the Head of Communications at the ABC and I normally respond to queries from journalists or others who intend publishing their views and responses.

Given your publishing record with Quadrant and The Spectator, can I please ask if your intent is an article in either publication?

Kind regards,

Nick Leys

Actually, I hadn’t received any response, let alone an adequate one, nonetheless I confirmed for Nick that, as I had made clear in my letter, I did intend to publish any response. I refrained from asking if my intention to publish or not would elicit a different response. Before I get into the details of this correspondence, let me put some context, for what might appear to be a rather trivial issue.

I believe that this country is being draped in a suffocating mantle of ‘Aboriginality’ that has no resemblance to reality.

I believe that this country is being draped in a suffocating mantle of ‘Aboriginality’ that has no resemblance to reality.  It does not reflect this nation.  I’m talking about the ubiquitous welcomes to country, acknowledgement of traditional owners, the inevitable Aboriginal motifs on our sporting uniforms, the triple flags and so on.  Aboriginal people are citizens of this country and individually have contributed significantly to it.  But so have most other Australians.  Australia, as a nation, owes a debt to these successful Aboriginal citizens.  But it owes nothing whatsoever to Aboriginal culture.

All these might seem to be simple ‘graceful gestures’, as our putative leader PM Albanese likes to sell it. But they are more than that. They are the emollient that smooths away – or at least is intended to – any resentment mainstream Australians may feel at having their nation stolen from them by unaccountable parliaments, for example, ceding Crown land to various Aboriginal corporations, as the Victorian government is currently proposing to do with Victoria’s fabled High Country. With that in mind, here is my letter to the ABC Chairman:

Dear Mr Williams,

I have been a devotee of ABC Classic FM for more years than I can remember but I have become increasingly irritated by its constant, almost slavish, references, and deferral, to Aboriginal themes.  I have never cared which studio the broadcast is coming from so why do I now need to be told that it’s from Gadigal land or Kulin land or whatever?

I understand that attitudes are, or may be, changing and that many listeners applaud this type of virtue signalling. I understand that if I want to continue to access one of the very few ‘market failure’ services that the ABC still provides, I’ll just have to cop it sweet.

But there is one meme that I find intolerable.  It is the constant references to Melbourne as Narrm.  As a matter of principle, what right do ABC presenters have to, effectively, unilaterally rename one of our major capitals?  Is this a policy of the ABC?  Or are they acting on their own initiative?  

If it is a policy of the ABC, may I point out that this is undeniably a political question.  Many conservative listeners share my view on this. I know this because I write for both Quadrant and Spectator magazines and the feed-back I get is unequivocal.  If it were put to a plebiscite to rename, or even just double-name, Melbourne, do you imagine it would garner much more support than the Voice referendum did?

I can understand, maybe even live with, the idea of renaming major natural features such as Ayer’s Rock and the Olgas, where the majority of the local population is Aboriginal. 

But as to Narrm, the aspect that most grates with me is that this usage is logically, or semantically, incoherent. 

According to Wikipedia:

The name Narrm is commonly used by the broader Aboriginal community to refer to the city, stemming from the traditional name recorded for the area on which the Melbourne city centre is built. The word is closely related to Narm-narm, being the Boonwurrung word for Port Phillip Bay. Narrm means scrub in Eastern Kulin languages which reflects the Creation Story of how the Bay was filled by the creation of the Birrarung (Yarra River).

So Narrm refers to a geographical area.  But Melbourne is not a geographical area.  It is a modern city comprising sophisticated and permanent infrastructure, linking permanently settled, and individually named, communities interacting with each other by means of a huge number of civic institutions and governed by a set of written and knowable laws.  This is a concept totally unknown to the original Aboriginal inhabitants.  And, of course, the metropolis of Melbourne already abounds in Aboriginal place names – Bundoora, Dandenong, Mooroolbark, Tullamarine and Pascoe Vale to name but a few.

Without colonization, whatever its faults, there would be no Melbourne. It is therefore a logical absurdity to equate it with an Aboriginal place name, and a gratuitous insult to all those pioneers and citizens who built Melbourne into what it is today.  The Australian people own the name Melbourne, and the history that is associated with it. The logical extension of this fallacy is that colonization brought nothing worthwhile with it.  What next?  Will ABC political reporters be talking about Parliament/Corroboree?

What next?  Will ABC political reporters be talking about Parliament/Corroboree?

I am not writing to you just in order to vent my frustration.  I am sure my readers would like to know your response to the following specific questions:

1/ Would you agree with me that a proposition by, say the Melbourne City Council, to formally change the name of Melbourne would be both political and highly contentious?

2/ Is it a policy of the ABC to promote such a change?

3/ If so, would that not be classed as partisan, political activism?

4/ If not, should not presenters be pulled into line, since they are, effectively and by stealth, pushing a political agenda?

I look forward to your reply.

Following my exchange with I Nick Leys, I received this response:

Dear Mr O’Brien,

Thank you again for your email. Given you intend reporting the ABC’s response to your query, I am providing the statement below. 

If you need further information about the ABC and its policies, please do not hesitate to contact me.

From an ABC spokesman please:

The use of Indigenous place names on ABC programs and platforms began in 2019 when the ABC joined Reconciliation Australia’s Action Plan, which is dedicated to making Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander names, voices, and languages an everyday part of the vocabulary.

The ABC is required to deliver valued services that reflect a sense of national identity and contribute to Australian society and culture. The ABC’s Elevate Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) champions initiatives that recognise and embrace Australia’s Indigenous history and cultures, and support reconciliation.

Other organisations and levels of government have similarly embraced Indigenous languages. The City of Melbourne has a declaration of recognition and commitment to Aboriginal peoples and has dual naming of Melbourne/Narrm on its website.

It’s not clear to me why the fact that I intended to publish the reply would affect the ABC’s response. I replied:

Hello Nick,

Thank you for your reply, however my letter was addressed to the Chairman and put certain questions to him personally.

Has the Chairman read my letter and does the statement you have provided represent his response to my questions?

kind regards

To which I was advised:

The statement is representative of the organisation.

From which I surmise that the Chairman was shielded from the distasteful task of actually reading my letter.  Is that acceptable practice in an organisation that consumes over $1 billion of our money every year?

Despite what the ABC claims, and the Melbourne City Council’s virtue-signalling, none of this aboriginalisation is done with the concurrence of Australian citizens.  None of it forms any part of a policy platform taken by any state government to an election. And the reason for this is that these governments have learned that when they put it to the people – as they should – it gets roundly rejected, as was the Voice. So they are doing it by stealth.

Whatever actions the ABC wishes to take internally in terms of ‘reconciliation’ is its own affair.  But the ABC is there to provide a service to Australians, and to reflect Australia as it is, not as the ABC thinks it should be.  What kind of reconciliation is it that is agreed between two parties, without any consultation with the broader community, and then just arbitrarily imposed upon the rest of us?  It certainly doesn’t make me feel better disposed towards the Aboriginal community.

It’s time Reconciliation Australia had its funding withdrawn.  It has achieved virtually nothing for that small but significant minority of Aboriginal Australians who are the most disadvantaged.

This bee in my bonnet about Narrm is, admittedly, only a minor issue.  It is not in the same league as the theft of Victoria’s High Country.  It is just a skirmish.  But if you are not prepared to fight the skirmishes, you cannot win the battles.  It’s up to Peter Dutton and the Coalition to deploy the big guns.  If they are up for it.  If not, we will see this nation further dismembered by this divisive virtue-signalling.