Campaigning Against Our Cultural Heritage

Sign Up for free e-mail updates!

IPA Review, March 2005, pgs 16-17

There has been much written about how Australia’s national character emerging from a bush ethos: the idea that a specifically Australian outlook emerged first amongst workers in the Australian pastoral industry.  The recent, big environmental and animal liberation campaigns, however, challenged key assumptions from this history.  They portrait Australian agriculture as harmful to the environment, and the animal liberationists suggest our farmers are inhumane.  Maybe it is time to abandon the bush, and embraced a vegan future!

Banjo Paterson, perhaps more than any other writer, created and defined our cultural heritage.  His story about the shearer and his jumbuck in outback Queensland remains our most popular national song.   Renditions of 'Waltzing Matilda' dominate when Australians gather at major international sporting events, including at the Olympic Games and Rugby Union matches.   But People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are, at the moment, campaigning against the wool industry.  They are against live export and they are against mulesing.  Mulesing involves the cutting away of skin from the crutch area to reduce the susceptibility of individual sheep to flystrike.  PETA wants the practice stopped or sheep to be anesthetized during the procedure.  As part of the campaign against wool products which is focused on US consumers, PETA campaigners have also suggested that the Australian landscape is too hot for sheep.   

Click here to read the complete article Download File (133 kbs)

More Publications