Paul Kelly has released a new song asking ‘If Not Now’ for the Yes campaign for the Voice to Parliament referendum in Australia in October.
The No campaign fuelled by Peter Dutton’s Liberal Party has been based on lies and scares tactics. That is not surprising coming from Dutton, who commentator Jan Fran has so succinctly summed up.
This, after all, is a man who walked out of the apology to the Stolen Generations, who voted no on same-sex marriage, who in 2016 said bringing Lebanese people to Australia was a mistake, whose department tried in 2017 to stop a suicidal ten-year-old boy from seeking treatment in Australia, who in 2018 said Victorians were afraid to go out because of African gangs, who in 2019 called the Biloela children “anchor babies”. This is the man who personally intervened to secure a visa for an au pair working for the family of his former police colleague all the while saying refugee women were using rape and abolition as a ploy to get into Australia and so on and so forth.
Here are the Paul Kelly words to “If Not Now?”:
It’s a splinter in the mind, a whisper in the heart
A feeling something’s missing, some crucial little part
It’s business that’s unfinished, a reckoning that’s due
If not now, then when? If not us, then who?It’s a simple proposition to join the new and old
A chance to make our country larger in its soul
It’s an invitation offered to set our course anew
If not now, then when? If not us, then who?How long can we keep walking with this stone in our shoe?
If not now, then when? If not us, then who?
We may never get another chance like this againIf not us, then who? If not now, then when
Too many falling far behind, shut out of the deal
If you called and no-one heard you, imagine how you’d feel
This land was never given, it was taken and then sold
But its ancient songs and stories are a gift greater than goldThe status quo is busted, let’s stop kicking that old can
If not us, then who? If not now, then when?
It’s business that’s unfinished, high time to see it through
If not now, then when? If not us, then who?
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