Wondering why the Prime Minister said that his favourite Midnight Oil song was ‘Beds are Burning’ (from ‘Diesel & Dust’)?
Webdiarist Mark Hayes in Brisbane does:
Remember back in August 2000, when the Olympics were on after hundreds of thousands of Australians showed their support for Aboriginal Reconciliation though the famous bridge walks and seas of hands? The Prime Minister had, and has, refused to apologise and say ‘Sorry’ to the Aboriginal people.
At the closing ceremony of the Games – that huge stadium party and concert broadcast live around the world to an audience of over one billion people – Midnight Oil, dressed in black track suits with the word ‘Sorry’ stencilled on them, ripped into ‘Beds are Burning’ before an ecstatic crowd.
Yothu Yindi followed up with ‘Treaty’.
The crowd at Olympic Stadium went berserk in screaming support, knowing exactly what was being done to shame the Government over Reconciliation.
Sitting in the audience with nowhere to run or hide, and no ‘I am advised’ to scuttle behind, Prime Minister Howard had no choice but to squirm and receive the huge, public, ‘F… You’ delivered loudly, proudly, and strongly by the Oils and Yothu Yindi.
He never forgets any slight delivered upon him, and exacts revenge whenever and wherever possible. This was a massive public rebuke at his meanness. And he won’t ever forget it.
That’s why his favourite Oils song is ‘Beds are Burning’, and he won’t sleep while his bed is burning for revenge against Labor for publicly embracing Peter Garrett, who delivered that most public of attacks on John Howard at what should have been one of his triumphant moments.”
Don�t those days seem too long ago. The last gasp of the old Australia before Howard�s makeover was complete, perhaps? Here�s what I wrote after at the time, in Cathy: the rights and wronged:
Cathy ”Freeman”, get it? Tonight, one of Australia’s most apolitical citizens climaxed the Olympics we had to have with an exclamation mark. As an Aboriginal Australian she won easily after coming from behind. When she’d done it and celebrated draped in the white and the black flag, she set us free to be us.
While buying champagne to celebrate her victory, I found myself in intense conversation with the checkout bloke and the next customer about the race. Everyone was ”stoked”, I think the Olympics cliche is.
To some political junkies, her victory was ”necessary”, an important symbol in the ongoing cultural wars over what we did, who we are and what we aspire to be. But what if she’d lost? If we really wanted her to win, how could we have asked her to light the flame, given that she had the biggest race of her life to run a few days later?
After the opening ceremony image of ”Freeman”, who could contemplate defeat? What would a loss do to our national pride after the spectacular sight of her, us, in the circle of fire? Didn’t she have every right to lose under the weight of all our hopes?
Perhaps she won because she cares only for the job she has chosen to do and is the best in the world at achieving that state of mind. But the way she won! We’d heard for days that ”Freeman” does only enough to win and no more. Last night, behind on the turn, she won by miles.
Last week, many letters to the editors of newspapers critiqued Cathy’s selection to light the flame. She hadn’t proved herself, some said. The choice was some sort of politically correct (ergo horrible) act by the elites. After all, she’d told a British newspaper recently that she strongly opposed John Howard’s refusal to apologise on behalf of the nation for the treatment its colonists had meted out to the original Australians, so that we could look at each other as equals.
That’s why she won by miles.