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David Day's defence mythology.

Article Excerpt
WRITING IN the Australian recently, anti-British and anti-American polemicist David Day claimed as part of his continuing attack on Australia's military and cultural alliances that "a deep vein of anxiety about invasion has been part of our collective psyche for more than a century".

When I read portentous-sounding pronouncements about things like "our collective psyche" my first impulse (well, my second impulse--my first involves the cylindrical filing cabinet) is to ask what is meant and what is the evidence for the pronouncement.

If Australia was deeply anxious about invasion throughout the last century why did it virtually disband its armed forces in the late 1920s, refuse to contribute to the building of the Singapore base, clock up about 600,000 working days lost directly through strikes in the Second World War, mainly on the coal-fields, wharves and other strategic areas, and during most of the Cold War spend a mere 3 per cent or so of its GDP on defence? And why does it spend only 2 per cent or less of its GDP on defence now?

Day continued: The origins of this peculiarly Australian anxiety can be traced to our relatively brief and tenuous occupation of the continent, combined with the feeling of isolation and the sense of being surrounded by hostile forces that come from our geographic position. Historically we have dealt with that anxiety by developing an image of ourselves as a martial race, with the supposed superiority of our physical prowess being able to repel any potential invaders (hence also the undue emphasis on sport in our national life).

Day provides no evidence to support any of this complex of statements, which remain unexamined myths. There is no evidence that Australia is more sports-obsessed than many other countries. In 1969 El Salvador and Honduras went to war over a soccer game, involving artillery and air as well as infantry combat, with thousands of people killed. In the British Daily Telegraph of June 6, 1998, sports commentator Paul Hayward wrote that for Britain:

Soccer provides the perfect synthesis between pop, sport and the cat-walk. Britain's gleaming all-seater stadiums are the new cathedrals. To turn one's back on the country's national obsession in to make a cultural outcast of oneself.

In the Spectator of April 17 this year, media correspondent Stephen Glover wrote of Britain: "In no other country in the world would the allegedly seedy sex life of a footballer with a reedy voice and a ridiculous ponytail be treated as a national event."

Day does not even try to establish who the Australians he is talking about are. Many Australians today are of Asian background. This is by no...