As a noisy and nosy Australian, I like to know how the other half lives. The quiet Australians. The silent Australians.
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For people who are allegedly quiet and silent, their allies are much like me, noisy, so I get to hear from them a lot.
Take Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Australian Christian Lobby's head Martyn Iles, for instance, who have both spoken on behalf of the oppressed, for possibly the first time in their lives. This week, the silent types are again thrust into the spotlight after Iles revealed the sheer waterfall of money gushing into their coffers. Those are donations to fund Israel Folau's challenge to Rugby Australia, which dismissed the fullback for allegedly breaching his terms of employment. The ACL fundraiser has earned a massive $2 million plus in the wake of crowdfunding platform GoFundMe's decision to shut down Folau's own appeal for funds.
"The quiet Australians are speaking with their wallets," Iles said. He also said the average donation was just below $100 and the number of donors around 600 an hour.
"There's a lot of juice left in this," he said.
I'm sure that there is a lot of what Mr Iles calls "juice" and I might call misguided generosity. The misguided generosity is funding an expensive legal campaign for a person who deliberately flouted the terms of his contract. I hear you when you say your employer shouldn't have a right to tell you what to do in your private life. They don't. It's what you do in public that's the problem because it brings shame and scandal in the family - a song my sainted mother loved singing to her teenagers. Her - other - teenagers. You can think whatever you like. For example, you can think that homosexuals will go to hell. Or that Jews should be gassed. Or that refugees should go back to where they came from. But if your employer says you shouldn't promote those ideas in public, then you should either put up with your -ahem - oppression and keep your job or expect to lose it at which point you can say whatever you like within the law. Plus condemning anyone to burn in hell surely qualifies as hate speech when if this country needs anything, it needs more love speech.
Please Izzy, on this occasion, be a quiet Australian. Maybe even a silent one.
So who are these quiet, silent Australians in support of gays going to hell? The ACL's fundraiser is silently silent on this. You have no idea who is donating to what. But when I asked on Twitter who the likely donors were, one woman responded in a flash.
Ronni Salt, also known as @MsVeruca, had taken a handful of screenshots of the GoFundMe page before it was closed down and kindly sent them to me. A managing director of an engineering company in Western Australia donated two grand. Two grand when there are children starving in Africa. I wrote to this bloke to ask him if he transferred the donation to the Australian Christian Lobby but haven't heard back yet. A squillionaire property developer whose dad was a squillionaire property developer, just 25 bucks. And a varied bunch of people who names you can find on social media and on news sites.
It's not possible to argue, based on that evidence, that it is only the wealthy and the powerful who are giving money. Based on the $25 donation, some of these wealthy-and-powerful donations wouldn't be enough to send Folau's barrister's junior's assistant out to buy a double-shot although collectively, a lot of Launceston. The ACL does not have to pay tax on its income and it's exempt from both GST and FBT, which costs all other taxpayers. They get to be tax-free while the rest of us don't.
So who are these quiet, silent Australians in support of gays going to hell? The ACL's fundraiser is silently silent on this. You have no idea who is donating to what.
I clearly remember the last time I heard about quiet Australians. It was in 2000 and Australians would emerge from their beds each morning and say: "I'm feeling very Olympic today." Those quiet Australians were thrilled to bits at a pack of foreigners landing on their shores and stealing all their medals. But when one Australian woman draped her shoulders in the Aboriginal flag, that did not please them, not one little bit. One correspondent to the West Australian wrote: "There are many quiet Australians who are offended by her blatant use of a racial flag."
Yet nearly 20 years on, Cathy Freeman is one of our most loved citizens, not just because she could run like the clappers but because she braved the quiet Australians and their disregard and even distaste for Indigenous Australia. Today the Aboriginal flag flies everywhere. Freeman stood up for what she believed in, didn't threaten anyone with hell and damnation, kept going. Through her actions, she spread love and acceptance. The noisy brave Australians who stood up won out in the end. I'm guessing that will eventually happen here. In some respects, it already has. Over 60 per cent of Australians voted for marriage equality. I don't think they voted for hell and damnation; and if they did, that place is going to be one hell of a hot mess. Also, less boring than heaven.
- Jenna Price is a Canberra Times columnist and an academic at the University of Technology Sydney.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article wrongly said the ACL's charitable status meant it was entitled to receive tax deductible donations. This is not the case.