Australians keep being Australian
4 min readMar 26, 2020
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On Saturday 15 March, Prime Minister Scott Morrison had an important announcement for all Australians about how we should respond to the covid-19 crisis:
“So long as Australians keep being Australian we’ll get through this together.”
It was a powerful message that nonetheless confused many, because it’s a topic we rarely have to think about outside of national holidays.
What does it mean to be Australian?
It puzzled me initially as well, but in the subsequent days, I have put together this handy list to help us make sense of it all.
(If you are not Australian, none of this will make sense to you. That’s ok, it doesn’t make much sense to us, either. But here we are.)
- Australians keep being Australian: buy an investment property and put the rent up.
- Australians keep being Australian: dob on your neighbour.
- Australians keep being Australian: have a dispute with your neighbour about a fence.
- Australians keep being Australian: blame the Greens.
- Australians keep being Australian: road rage a cyclist.
- Australians keep being Australian: subdivide.
- Australians keep being Australian: don’t list it as a private rental, put it on AirBnB.
- Australians keep being Australian: cans at the bowlo.
- Australians keep being Australian: enter a choked intersection on an orange light.
- Australians keep being Australian: tailgate like that space is going to disappear if you let up.
- Australians keep being Australian: hire someone on a 457 instead.
- Australians keep being Australian: don’t make eye contact with the homeless person you see every day at the train station.
- Australians keep being Australian: tell people that Islam is not a race.
- Australians keep being Australian: cut down a tree that’s blocking the view.
- Australians keep being Australian: don’t put Newstart up for 25 years.
- Australians keep being Australian: use client states to offshore torture and cruelty.
