Inclusion is easy until it asks something of you.

This weekend, Aboriginal Elders were booed while delivering Welcome to Country at Anzac Day dawn services in Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth.

Uncle Ray Minniecon — an ADF veteran whose grandfather served in the Light Horse Brigade — continued his Acknowledgement of Country while people booed for nearly a minute. He was applauded when he finished.

In Melbourne, some of those involved in the booing were former members and associates of the recently disbanded National Socialist Network. Neo-Nazis. At an Anzac Day dawn service. Booing a veteran.

And then came the argument that revealed everything.

Welcome to Country is divisive. It’s overused. There was no division before it started.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said he could “understand the frustration Australians feel about over-use” of Welcome to Country ceremonies — echoing former Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who argued it was “dividing the country in the same way the Voice referendum did.”

Let’s be honest about what’s happening here.

The No vote in the Voice referendum didn’t just defeat a constitutional proposal. It gave permission. It signalled to a portion of the population that their resistance to First Nations recognition was legitimate — mainstream, even. Since the referendum failed, lobby groups have run sustained paid advertising campaigns on social media targeting Welcome to Country specifically. The booing this weekend didn’t emerge from nowhere. It was deliberately cultivated over time, with money behind it.

And now political leaders are meeting it halfway. Not condemning the sentiment — just the volume.

This is how racism gets laundered into respectability. Not through dramatic acts that everyone can agree to condemn. Through the slow, steady normalisation of resistance to recognition. Through politicians who say “I condemn the booing, but I understand the frustration.” Through the framing of acknowledgement as imposition. Through the argument that the problem isn’t the contempt — it’s the practice that made the contempt visible.

The argument that Welcome to Country creates division is the same argument used to oppose every form of inclusion that has ever asked anything of the people who benefit from the status quo.

It was used to prevent women from entering the workforce. Against marriage equality. Against disability access legislation. Against any acknowledgement that the default was never neutral — it was just comfortable for the people it was built around.

The Welcome to Country at an Anzac Day service did not create division. It revealed it. The contempt was already there. The racism was already there. The inclusion practice just brought it into the light, where it could no longer be quietly ignored.

Uncle Ray Minniecon said it plainly:

“We have experienced this type of racism for over 230 years. What crime did we commit to attract this kind of racism and this kind of hate?”

None. The answer is none.

Inclusion is easy when it costs nothing. When it’s a values statement, a training session, a line in a speech that everyone applauds and nobody has to live by.

This weekend, it asked for something small. A few minutes of acknowledgement. Stillness. The recognition that this land has a history that predates every person standing at that dawn service.

And a portion of the crowd decided that was too much.

That is not a fringe problem. It is what happens when we let people believe they support inclusion right up until the moment it requires something of them. When we mistake comfort for commitment. When we allow the absence of visible conflict to pass as evidence that everything is fine.

The Elders continued anyway.

Uncle Ray continued to acknowledge despite the booing. He was applauded when he finished. Not because it was easy. Because it was right.

That is what it looks like to hold the line when inclusion asks you for something.

The question this weekend leaves me with — the one I think we all need to sit with — is not whether we support inclusion in principle.

It’s what we are prepared to give when it stops being comfortable.

Because inclusion is easy until it asks something of you.

The Elders showed us what it looks like to give it anyway.

Over To You

This week, when you hear someone say inclusion is divisive — what will you say back?

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