Australia has to rethink what 'mateship' means

As a nation still in its infancy, Australia’s cultural ethos is built on the value it places on mateship. 

More than any other trait, except for its larrikin attitude, it is how Australians values mateship that appeals to the world.

Borne from the melding of its convict heritage and strong migrant settlement, Australia has defined itself on being there when mates are in need, regardless of their own personal challenges.

From the hardship and tenuous existence of early settlement to a land so different to what most had called home, and catastrophic weather events including drought, fires, and yes, flooding rains, the foundation of ‘having each other’s back’ was forged early.

Australia is a country of challenging climate extremes – from deserts to tropical environments - temperatures can range from highs of 40°C in the central desert to below freezing in the higher regions of the country's southeast, all can be experienced on a single day.

That is what makes Australia so unique – its diversity in climate, its culture and its immigrant population that have bonded to help make the country the great nation it now is.

Nation defining projects like the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, characterised by hardship, tenacity, and teamwork, only served to imprint mateship as the cornerstone of the Australian psyche even further.

Mateship also defines the unification of a nation and the integration of many cultures. Migrant’s former allies and even enemies, and descendants of colonised convicts coming together, spilling blood, facing harm and death, to forge a new modern and better Australia.

For Australia, projects like the Snowy Hydro were more than just an infrastructure build, they shaped many parts of its history.

More than 100,000 people from more than 30 countries worked on the Scheme, many escaping the horror of post-war Europe, beginning a new life, and working collectively to become part of the Snowy family.

The Snowy Hydro Electric Scheme became the foundation to help build a new different and more inclusive Australia.

And just as the country was developing its sense of self on home soil, the same was happening on the world stage as it sought to find its place geopolitically.

While its relationship was more established and certain with the UK and more broadly the Commonwealth, it fell into a similar ‘easy’ – or perhaps even ‘given’ – alliance with the US. The Australian ethos of mateship – either person-to-person or nation-to-nation brings with it security and respect. 

But considering the current geopolitical landscape, at what cost does friendship become a compromise, or even dangerous?  

Australia has been a strong friend and ally to the US, only strengthened during WW2 when the threat of Japanese occupation grew. It was the US who was there to help a mate in need, not England!

The US support during the war in the Pacific exemplified mateship to Australia, which was quickly learning the UK could not come to Australia’s aid when it was needed most.

It was true mateship. 

Since then, Australia has found itself standing shoulder to shoulder with the US in nearly every conflict America has found itself in.

So, when mates are asked to do the unruly, and help in subversion and enforce a proxy war - is the friendship being abused?

In 1966, it was all the way with LBJ, the catchcry of the then Holt Government. In the wake of WW2, with Russia dominant throughout Eastern Europe and China likewise in north Asia, fears of a communist expansion throughout Asia ran high. 

US concerns about North Vietnam prevailing and turning Vietnam into a communist state, would also see Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand possibly fall. 

As an ally of the US, Australia was an enthusiastic supporter of American policy in Vietnam, and it quickly followed. It offered military advisors to assist South Vietnamese forces in a move aimed at supporting US policy and addressing Australia’s own regional concerns.

Four years earlier, the world sat on the precipice of nuclear destruction. WW3 beckoned as elements within the CIA, attempted to lure the USSR into a war, all based on a lie.

Had it not been for a shared goal and the cool heads of Kennedy and Kruschev, in a time when the world needed leadership the most, the outcome could have been very different.

Wind the clock forward 60 years, and a new global conflict is staring the world down. The actors are the same, the premise remains unchanged, but the stage is different, and the scripts more complex.

The fact is 2022 is a vastly different world to 1962. Life was a lot simpler, and the world had different leaders – two men who were independent thinkers, resolute in resolving an issue and not embarking on global destruction.

Today is a different story, with complex challenges and issues that threaten society’s existence daily.

The Russia/Ukraine war when analysed is not as it seems. Is Vladimir Putin and Russia the bogeyman the US and NATO make him out to be?

Russia isn’t without blame, but the US has form and history tells us so.

If the US wants to de-escalate any chance of a third world war, then it should withdraw its and NATO forces away from Russia’s border and pull out of NATO as Trump intended to do.

Putin rightly views their presence as a threat to Russia’s sovereignty and security.

De-escalation should be Biden and NATO’s key objective, not escalating global tensions and threatening the world’s safety.

But the US has shown it won’t.

Using the Ukraine as its proxy to wage war against Putin and Russia to depose him, and have him out of the way, would allow it to advance its economic and political interests throughout the region.

However, Putin stands between the US establishing a dominant presence in a frontier it has more than coveted for decades and not.

Look at the Vietnam War, the invasion of Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction – events manufactured and based on lies to give the US reason to invade sovereign nations. And let’s not forget the US role in the formation of ISIS and what the US’s intentions were there as well.

The Middle East has been a hot bed of destruction and ruination for decades and the US has played a key role in all of it.

When US economic interests are threatened, or puppet leaders like Moammar Ghaddafi decide to flip, they’re exterminated by US Inc.

The US has always seen itself as a global policeman, but as we have come to learn, police are not above corruption. It’s never been the US’s intentions to be a global policeman – that’s a cover it uses to enhance its political and economic interests.

With that in mind, the question must be asked, what is Australia doing by offering to send military advisors to a conflict that does not impact its geopolitical or economic interests?

If the reasoning is obligation, to ‘help a friend in need’ or indeed, ‘be a mate’, then it is time to rethink what mateship means.

Australia has never shirked an issue to help its mates, but as I said, 2022 is very different from the Iraq War in 2003, or 1955 when the Vietnam War began, and certainly WW2.

Perhaps the time has come for Australia to rethink involving itself in conflicts that aren’t geopolitically relevant.  

Escalating the chances of becoming a nuclear target is not what Australians want – nor any other country for that matter, and certainly not for a proxy war fostered for economic and political interest.

It might just be time for a more nuanced definition of mateship

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