CLAIM: A licence to punt is un-Australian
The term un-Australian has long been adopted by politicians and interest groups to convey a sense of ‘cultural otherness’ to forward their agendas.
Beloved by conservative politicians, columnists and radio shock jocks, the term un-Australian is invoked to create a sense of righteous indignation and “how dare they?!” among the populace, hoping they will gather with pitchforks and torches to strike down perceived cultural enemies.
So, it’s perhaps no surprise that the Australian Hotels Association and Clubs Australia chose to adopt the loaded term in its controversial ad campaign against proposed federal pokies reform.
The industry bodies are railing against Andrew Wilkie’s, or as their online video refers to him, “some bloke from Tasmania”, proposed reforms that requires gamblers to pre-commit an amount of money they’re willing to lose on pokies machines.
The campaign has called this arrangement as “a licence to punt”, claiming that it’s un-Australian to strip from people the right to gamble as they please. The ads argue that such a system is a loss of freedom, privacy and of support to community and sporting clubs – this, the ads claim, goes against the Australian spirit.
To assess the AHA/Clubs Australia’s claim that “a licence to punt” is un-Australian, Truth must take a look in the annals of history, well at least since the 1990s, at how the term has been used in public discourse.
According to the journal of all knowledge, Wikipedia, while the term has been around since the mid-19th century, John Howard
repopularised it in the ’90s, bandying it about to describe trade unionists, striking wharfies and anti-globalisation and anti-war protesters. Un-Australian was also a favourite of Pauline Hanson and more recently, Gerry Harvey took to the press and condemned shopping online from overseas websites as un-Australian. History will judge how that worked out for him.
Of late, un-Australian has been used by comedians and satirists as an ironic term. Meat & Livestock Australia’s Australia Day lamb
campaigns featuring Sam Kekovich used the term with humour, but there are more than some riled-up vegetarians out there.
On an official note, Macquarie Dictionary defines the term as, “not conforming to ideas of traditional Australian morality and
customs, such as fairness, honesty, hard work, etc.”
And there’s the kicker, “fairness”. The AHA/Clubs Australia consortium argue that it’s unfair to require people to pre-commit to how much money they’re willing to lose. But there are no limits as to what you’re willing to pre-commit. If you’re willing to lose $10,000 on the Queen of the Nile, feel free. That’s still your choice.
But the proposed reforms are designed to protect vulnerable members of the community who can’t afford to lose $10,000 and yet may well do because of addiction. To allow that to continue, to allow Australian people to sink into despair and misery because of something they can’t control, well surely that’s un-Australian.
PROVEN? NO
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