Introduction by Croakey: The Federal Opposition waste spokesman, James Stevens, issued a media statement earlier this month saying that Freedom of Information requests had revealed “the staggering cost” of Welcome to Country ceremonies across Commonwealth government departments.
More than $450,000 was spent by 21 government departments on these ceremonies in the last two years, the statement said.
By Croakey’s calculation, this equates to an average spend of $10,714 per department each year – hardly a staggering amount, all things considered. In fact, an argument could easily be made that it is “a staggering” under-spend.
The issues are, of course, not actually about the public moneys spent on these ceremonies, but about inflaming the so-called culture wars, which are a foundational plank of the Federal Opposition’s election strategy, without any apparent care for the costs to the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
In reviewing the history of Welcome to Country ceremonies, Dr Louis Peachey, who was a founding president of the Australian Indigenous Doctors Association, provides some evidence and context missing from the MP’s statement and subsequent media coverage that is also important for cultural safety in healthcare.
Louis Peachey writes:
Since the October 2023 Referendum, there has been an increasing attack on Welcome to Country ceremonies in Australia.
At the very tip of the spear of this attack is an assertion on social media that the Welcome to Country ceremony was invented by Ernie Dingo in 1976, for the Perth International Arts Festival. This assertion is broadcast with such confidence, but is by any metric untrue.
This assertion is a fragment of truth wrapped in multiple layers of false and fanciful notions.
It is true that the modern ceremony, which takes place at conferences, symposia and sporting events, is very different to the ancient traditions.
When Aboriginal people undertook these ceremonies prior to European settlement, there were no conference centres, no delegates arriving by jet and staying at five star hotels. There were no ‘public address systems’, no microphones to speak into, no PowerPoint presentations or data projectors to display the PowerPoint presentations.
But in fairness, when the First Fleet arrived, most of the folks who came on those 11 ships were people in His Majesty’s Service, or people in shackles – and very unlike the folks who present at the conferences, symposia or sporting events in our present age.
The first documented Welcome to Country ceremony performed for non-Indigenous visitors was in the Colony of South Australia for the arrival of Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, at the Lake Country at the Mouth of the River Murray on the evening of Monday, 11 November, 1867.
A written account of the day was published in the Adelaide Observer on Saturday, 9 January, 1869 on page 15 (interested readers may independently confirm this for themselves by looking this up on the “Trove” website of the National Library of Australia).
This particular account was authored by non-Indigenous observers, who made reference to a banner held by Aboriginal people which bore the words “Point McLeay” (the location of an Aboriginal Mission), and the specific words “Welcome to our country”.
The original context of the traditional Welcome to Country ceremony was to formally grant permission to a visitor group to enter another tribe’s country. As a young man, my Uncles told me the visitors would come to the border of ‘Country’ and send up a smoke signal. The Traditional Owners would then go to meet the visitors, and investigate the visitor’s reasons for seeking passage into Country.
When Matthew Flinders circumnavigated the Australian continent, a Kuringgai man, known as Bungaree, would negotiate safe passage with local Aboriginal people whenever the voyage would make landfall.
Flinders observed these negotiations between Bungaree and local tribes, noting that the conversations were usually undertaken using signing and gestures. When the negotiation finished and the local people agreed to safe passage, that moment was a ‘Welcome to Country’.
In our modern era, a Welcome to Country was documented for the 1973 Aquarius Festival in Nimbin NSW. The Welcome was performed by Elders Uncle Lyle Roberts and song man Uncle Dickee Donnelly.
Indeed, there is a large portion of the last two centuries where there is little documentation of these ceremonies taking place, but that is NOT evidence that the ceremonies were not taking place, it is simply evidence that Aboriginal Australians were largely invisible to the National Gaze.
This is a point that was made by W.E.H. Stanner in his 1968 Boyer Lectures, it is also a point that has been repeatedly made by historian Professor Henry Reynolds over the last half century.
Aboriginal people and our achievements were very specifically excluded from the official record until the 1970s. In such an environment, it is not surprising that there is little record of Welcome to Country ceremonies between the 1867 Royal Visit of Prince Alfred to the Colony of South Australia, and the 1973 Aquarius Festival in Nimbin.
Behind the headlines
On 5 January 2025, the office of the Federal Member for Sturt, James Stevens, issued a press release titled ‘Multi-Million Dollar ‘Welcome’ Industry’. The press release then stated that “More than $450,000 was spent by just 21 government departments on these ceremonies in the last two years”.
In this press release, at no point does the author explain the ‘Multi-Million Dollar’ phrase in the title of the press release.
Although the figure of $450,000 seems large, this is an expense spent over 21 government departments over a two-year period. The following day Stevens was interviewed on 2GB by Lucy Zelic, who is a well credentialed and very experienced journalist – not that this was remotely evident in the manner of her interview.
Had the interview been conducted by journalists of yore, such as Barrie Cassidy or Kerry O’Brien, it is simply unimaginable that they would have skipped past the headline claim of “Multi-Million Dollar” when the statement described less than half a million dollars spent over two years.
In the press release, Stevens notes the average fee per occasion of service was $1,266.
Whilst this may seem like a windfall to any number of struggling Australian citizens in the middle of a cost of living crisis, it is not at all an extraordinary expense for conferences or symposia. At many medical conferences or symposia, that would be less than the registration fee of a single delegate.
There was the usual level of outrage that ‘Aborigines’ were being paid fees of this level, with the catch cry that the money could be better spent on the poor and needy.
For me, that argument was highly reminiscent of the story in the first part of the Bible’s book of John, chapter 12. Mary, the sister of Lazarus, massaged an expensive aromatic oil into Jesus feet, and Brother Judas got cranky, noting the oil could have been sold, and the proceeds given to the poor.
During his 2GB interview with Lucy Zelic, Stevens responded directly from the Judas Iscariot playbook with, “And of course, the millions of dollars that all levels of government are clearly spending on these ceremonies every year are millions of dollars that are not being spent addressing the real, serious challenges facing particularly remote and regional Indigenous communities”.
Folks like Stevens love to preach ‘practical solutions’ over ‘symbolism’, then in their next breath will implore us to love the ‘Flag’. Symbolism matters, ask any CEO who is about to commission a new logo for their business.
The press release was based upon a Freedom of Information application. So, this was not a detail revealed by independent auditors. This was the MP specifically seeking information for the purpose of embarrassing the government of the day.
More amnesia
How quickly we forget other scandals of misspent government funds.
How much money did the Liberal-National Coalition government spend on a postal vote, because they were seeking political cover due to profound cowardice to do their jobs and recognise same sex unions?
How much money did they waste on reopening the immigration detention facility on Christmas Island ahead of a Federal election to create the illusion of floods of ‘Unauthorised Arrivals’ should the lefties win the upcoming election?
How much money was wasted with the contract exit fees paid to the French, when they decided to go with the AUKUS deal? Which even now, shows little likelihood of Australia getting the promised nuclear powered submarines in the foreseeable future.
This MP’s foray into this particular paddock does come in the post Referendum climate of recurrent whining about seeing Welcome to Country Ceremonies at the beginning of football matches and other public events.
We have also seen the rise of the sentiment “Why do I need to be welcomed to my own Country?”.
This notion is clearly propagated by people who have never opened a dictionary to discover that the same word can have different meanings depending on the context in which it is used. When a local Elder welcomes you to Country, this is not welcoming you to Australia.
The folks who complain about this seem to feign deep personal injury from being “Welcomed to One’s Own Country”.
As a child attending church, it was commonplace for the pastor to welcome the congregation to church. In my early childhood, the church building where our services were held was physically built by a small number of volunteer men from that church, my father being one of those men.
I never heard Dad whinge about “How dare the pastor welcome me to my own church”.
At any number of large social gatherings, it is commonplace for an office bearer of the host organisation to welcome the crowd to the event, but I have not witnessed folks being indignant about being welcomed.
When a place or area is described as “welcoming”, this is generally a positive or complimentary description. But for some folks “welcoming” ceases to be favourable in the presence of an Aboriginal Elder.
It is true, that the welcome ceremony has evolved from the ‘Granting of a Visa’ to an opportunity to teach the audience a little of the traditions and history of the families who have inhabited the land for several millennia prior to the arrival of Europeans.
In all societies we see evolution in their ceremonies. Wedding dresses were not traditionally white, this only began following the marriage of a young Queen Victoria to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
Engagement rings adorned with diamonds became fashionable among the wealthy during the renaissance, but were not used among the middle and working classes until the early 20th century. The Great Depression saw a collapse of diamond prices, and De Beers launched a campaign to increase their sales by pitching diamond engagement rings to common folk.
Christmas began as a celebration of the rebirth of the Sun God of a few different Mediterranean and European cultures, and was subsequently adopted by Christians to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Over the period since settlement of the Australian continent, we have seen it evolve from the sacred to the profane.
Easter evolved from amalgamating ancient Europeans’ spring celebrations with the Christian observance of the death and resurrection of Christ. Many people who celebrate Easter today have difficulty explaining to their children the confluence between chocolate eggs and rabbits and the death and resurrection of God Incarnate. Easter is also now a significantly commercial affair.
On the whole Aboriginal Australians have been happy to roll with these European traditions brought to this continent, but a significant portion of the European descendants seem to take deep offence at the notion of Aboriginal Elders sharing commemorative ceremonies of our ancient customs with the broader Australian community.
When the customs of Aboriginal Australians evolve to suit modern circumstances, these folk become indignant of what they call “the inauthenticity”, but are happy to tolerate their own sacred traditions being commodified.
As these folk who increasingly protest the sharing of Aboriginal customs with broader Australia moan and complain about their perceived injury, I am still behoved to understand what the nature of that injury might be.
Has our sharing of customs with our fellow non-Indigenous citizens caused them to have their land taken, or their own customs or language extinguished?
Has it caused these folk to lose the franchise, and be blocked from participating in the democratic project?
Has it blocked them from being counted among the numbers of people of the Commonwealth?
Has it resulted in police removing their children from their mother’s arms?
Or was that just us who experienced those things as a result of the newcomers sharing their culture with us?
If non-Indigenous Australians wish to see their sacred traditions return to their foundations, rather than what these things have evolved into, I can find it in my heart to applaud this quest for authenticity.
And I will happily encourage these pilgrims with the greeting, “No worries Cobber, you first”.
As an Aboriginal man who is a medical practitioner, I have long been asked by colleagues about the secret to delivering culturally safe care.
This is of course no secret at all, and it is also not specific to any one cultural group. Patients will be more confident in the care they receive if they feel that their words have been listened to, and their concerns have been addressed.
Part of listening to people is making space for them to tell you their story in their own words, and in their own time.
A Welcome to Country allows us to tell our stories in our own way, the purpose of which is to make a connection to the people to whom the welcome is given.
• This is an edited version of posts originally published on Facebook by Dr Louis Peachey. See his previous Croakey article: As 26 January approaches, an antidote to historical amnesia and ignorance.
Author details
Dr Louis Peachey is from Girrimay, Djirribal, Quandamooka and Badtjala ancestors. He is a highly respected Rural Generalist and medical educator, as well as a mentor for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander doctors and medical students. Founding president of the Australian Indigenous Doctors Association, he was awarded Life Fellowship of the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine (ACRRM), and was instrumental in establishing the College’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members group. He is based in the Atherton Tablelands in Far North Queensland. Read more here and here.
See Croakey’s archive of articles on the cultural determinants of health
