PDF (Whole Thesis) - USQ ePrints - University of Southern ...

he designed for himself in a paddock in the back of Virginia writing the words: ‘Life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. There weren’t 230 million when they were
getting the ethos of the country together; when they were getting their great
architectural heritage together; when they were rooting their values in the soil. They
had leadership, and that’s what politics is about. Now we are leading this country,
and I don’t think any of us thinks that we’re up to the Lincolns or the Roosevelts or
the Washingtons. There [start p. 126] are no soldier-statesmen lurking about this city
but, the fact is, we’re doing our best. (2005, p. 126-127, emphasis added)
This view of lack of strong leadership is also held by others, and still asserted in more recent
times. See, for example, an extract from John Carroll’s Deakin Lecture Australia’s
equanimity is a mystery delivered on 12 May 2001 at Capitol Theatre, Melbourne. Where
Carroll differs from Keating, is that he is not necessarily using it as a criticism of Australian
citizens’ political decisions, more as part of a wider observation of Australian culture and
way of life. Carroll asserts:
This country is refusing the great leader archetype – from Moses to Abraham Lincoln
–invited the people themselves to preside. The choice was not for lack of candidates
of stature, starting with the political visionary in whose honour these lectures are
named. (Carroll, 2004, p. 57)
A1.5.2 February 1994: Wayne Goss, Queensland school curriculum and invasion.
The Queensland curriculum attracted widespread media attention and public interest when it
was reported that a Social Studies draft curriculum document endorsed by the state Labor
government, contained the word “invasion” to describe the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788.
Wayne Goss, then Premier of Queensland, responded to the emerging furor by demanding
that the word be removed. Of this issue, Goss stated, “I think just about all Australians would
not regard what happened in 1788 as an invasion” (as cited in A. Clark, 2002b, p. 5). Over
the next month, major newspapers, broadsheet and tabloid, carried this issue along with
opinion pieces, editorials and letters to the editor either strongly supporting or vehemently
attacking the view of the 1788 arrival being termed as an “invasion” (for an in-depth
coverage of the polarisation of views expressed over this issue, see Anna Clark’s Teaching
the Nation, 2006).
457