The PR Blog

Banjo Paterson is the giant of Australian literature and folk law. His exploits in this field are so extensively well documented that I would not presume to add to them. However, in modern Australia, perhaps it is time to start celebrating people like him again.

What is less well known than his poetry is his contribution to the war effort in WW1 and to a much lesser extent The Boer War. His contribution to the successes of the Light Horse brigades was outstanding.

Banjo Paterson was a newspaper correspondent intermingled with a legal practice. When the second Boer War broke out on 11^th October, 1899 Banjo was a member of the NSW Lancers and sought to sail with the first contingent for South Africa. He was rejected for active service because he had only one good arm. He was well connected with the Fairfax family and asked to be sent to South Africa at his own expense for one month to serve as a war correspondent. One month was the limit of his financial resources.

The problem many of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders we speak to have continuously raised with us is that under Native Title the land is locked up and can’t benefit from it. That’s about half of Australia locked up under Native Title and held with the government. Is it any wonder the United Nations is so interested in Native Title?

The white and black aboriginal industry consists of lawyers, consultants, activists, academics, politicians and bureaucrats. They all claim to be ‘closing the gap’ between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ standard of living and other non aboriginal Australians. The fundamental flaw in this system is that those running the industry are parasitically living off the money that is given to the Aboriginal communities. It is a self-perpetuating problem.

Every year the billions of taxpayers’ dollars poured into solving the problem is being syphoned off by the same individuals who “claim” to be helping. Very little of the money makes it through to those in need.

When war broke out on 3^rd September, 1939 there was no mad rush of support for the causes espoused by Britain or for Poland and other occupied European countries. Americans were very much of a mind to remain out of any European war. There was no universal feeling of kinship towards Britain and there was, in fact, quite a lot of sympathetic support for Hitler.

The second most common language spoken in the USA at the time was German and to cap it all the Neutrality Act prevented any engagement, let alone involvement, by Americans with any belligerent country. That included Britain and France as well as Germany.

Amongst all that however, there was a core of sympathetic support for Britain and an eagerness by those who had learned how to fly to enter the fray. Among the various means of getting around the rigours of the Neutrality Act was to cross the border into Canada and proceed from there.

It was September 15th 1940 . An auspicious day. The Allies had faced enormous adversity In June 1940; the Wehrmacht had overcome most of Western Europe and Scandinavia. 

At that time, the only major power standing in the way of a German-dominated Europe was the British Empire and the Commonwealth.

There had been dark days and days that were increasingly full of light from the daylight raids on Britain from the German attacks that were set to test the resolve of the British people. 

The Prime Ministers of Canada and, most recently, New Zealand, have assured their nation’s citizens that they had never forced anyone to get vaccinated, despite their years-long, well-documented support for vaccine mandates.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Prime Minister Chris Hipkins are joined in their eleventh-hour rewrite of history by Pfizer executives who said in a recent Australian Senate hearing that “nobody was forced to have a vaccine”.

As citizen journalist Rebekah Barnett has quipped, “We are at the ‘no one made you take it, it was your choice’ stage of the pandemic.”