I’m Not Sorry, and Plenty of Aussies Aren’t Either, By George Christensen

Nation First smacks down Sorry Day and the politics of guilt.

I'm not sorry for being Australian. I'm not sorry for my ancestors either. And I don't think millions of ordinary Australians should be made to feel guilty for things they never did, had no control over and weren't even alive to witness.

What really frustrates people is that this stuff never seems to end. There's always another apology, another ceremony, another lecture about the past. Meanwhile, most people I talk to in regional Queensland aren't sitting around consumed by colonial guilt. They're worried about whether they can afford groceries next week. They're worried about power bills, rent, mortgages, insurance premiums and whether their kids will ever be able to buy a home.

That's real life for Australians right now.

My own ancestors weren't wealthy British aristocrats arriving here to rule over people. Some came here as convicts. Poor as dirt. Sent across the world against their will by the British Empire itself. They didn't arrive in Australia living some grand life of privilege. They struggled, worked hard and tried to survive in a harsh country a long way from anywhere.

That's the story for a lot of Australians, actually. Working-class people who built lives from scratch. Families who came here after wars, during economic hardship or simply chasing a better future. Yet somehow modern Australia increasingly talks as though ordinary people today inherited some sort of collective moral stain because of their ancestry.

Honestly, I think a lot of people are sick of hearing it.

Of course bad things happened in Australian history. Bad things happened throughout human history. Every country on Earth has ugly chapters in its past. Human civilisation itself is messy, violent and imperfect. But there's a difference between acknowledging history and constantly reopening wounds in a way that keeps people divided and resentful.

And yes, resentful is exactly what this approach creates. You can already see it.

When people are endlessly told they're privileged oppressors because of their skin colour or ancestry, eventually they switch off completely. Some become angry. Others just stop listening altogether. Then the people pushing these campaigns wonder why support starts collapsing and why Australians rejected things like the Voice referendum.

Most Australians actually want unity. Genuine unity. Not the kind that gets talked about at government-funded ceremonies while Australians are sorted into racial categories and expected to think of themselves that way forever. They want to feel like we're all Australians together and that we share the same future regardless of where our ancestors came from.

That's not radical. It's normal.

I also think there's a growing frustration with how Australian history is taught and talked about now. Too often it feels like this country is only discussed through the lens of shame and oppression. Young Australians are constantly told about what was wrong with Australia, but rarely about what was actually right with it. Rarely about the freedoms, stability and opportunities that made millions of people from around the world want to come here in the first place.

And despite all our faults, this is still one of the best countries on Earth to live in. Most Australians know that instinctively. That's why people get angry when patriotism itself starts being treated like something embarrassing or suspicious.

I'm proud to be Australian. I don't think that requires an apology.

That doesn't mean pretending history was perfect. It doesn't mean denying hardship or suffering. It just means refusing to carry personal guilt for events that happened generations before I was born. I think that's a perfectly reasonable position and judging by the conversations happening around the country, plenty of Australians agree.

At some point this country needs to stop looking at itself as a collection of competing grievances and start acting like a nation again. A shared identity matters. National unity matters. A sense of belonging matters. Countries that lose those things usually don't stay united for very long.

Australians are tired. Tired of being lectured. Tired of being divided by race. Tired of being told there's something shameful about loving their country or taking pride in its achievements. Most people just want to get on with life, raise their families and live in a country that sees itself as one people rather than permanently broken into tribes arguing over the past.

That's where I stand, anyway.

And no, I'm not sorry for it.

https://nationfirst.substack.com/p/im-not-sorry-and-plenty-of-aussies