“From this time forward, under God, I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share. Whose rights and liberties I respect and whose laws I will uphold and obey”.
Migrants’ oath before Australian citizenship.
There is little doubt that the glory years of peace & prosperity in our Nation were embedded in the 1950s and 60s.
Indeed, for the entire time – 1949 to 1972 – that the Federal Labor Party was in the political wilderness,something truly great, and binding, transpired – THE SNOWY MOUNTAINS SCHEME.
The “Snowy” was the largest engineering project ever undertaken in Australia.
Statistically, 16 major dams [including the Eucumbene, Jindabyne & Blowering], 7 power stations and 225 kilometres of tunnels and pipelines were constructed.
Of crucial, further interest was the diversity and numbers of migrants who chipped in.
An estimated 100,000 people worked on the Scheme between 1949 and 1972; TWO thirds of them were migrants from over 40 countries!
In a very real sense, another Australian national identity, post-Anzac, was forged.
There was no centrelink cop out for these hardy migrants. Some worked day and night, principally out of gratitude to the “fair go” that this, their new Nation, was affording them. This is universally accepted. In fact, your correspondent’s dad was one of them.
The problems of latter day, sabre wielding Sharians as we witnessed at the weekend in Hyde Park, Sydney,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K5aetVbh7Y&app=desktop
is that there is no loyalty to Australian laws and values, but its complete Antithesis.
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