The view from Kings Park looking down on Perth CBD is always a joy, but at wildflower time in September, a jewel.

The cenotaph dominates the vista from the café, and I was intrigued on Saturday September 13 to see a bevy of old blokes, identically kitted out in dark jackets and berets, gathering, bearing banners and flags.

What could they be commemorating? Were they Viet Vets remembering Long Tan? I googled the dates: no, that heroic stand took place in August 1966.

The next step was to google “September 13” which delivered the factoid that on that date in 1890, “Lieutenant Edward Tyndale-Biscoe hoisted the Union Jack atop a kopje overlooking the future capital of Salisbury”.

It was now time to get within reading distance of the banners: yes, they were celebrating Foundation Day for Rhodesia. The crowd gathered, heading for an 11am ceremony of some sort, and then the Governor of WA appeared with a small entourage.

This really was a formal outing with the full blessing of the WA Government.

What followed for the one hundred or so uniformed veterans of the Southern Rhodesian army and assorted Australian officials was a series of speeches and prayers reflecting on the sacrifice for Empire put in by Rhodesians and gratitude for their current lives in Australia.

What was, of course, creepy about these proceedings was that the attendees were celebrating their part in a war for white supremacy that raged in the southern African bush from 1965 to 1979.

That may be unfair: a war for retaining social advantage amounting to supremacy for a minority of the populace, who just happened to be white.

This possibly unfair thought was provoked by Googling the Rhodesian Association’s website, where an honour roll listed the dead in that bush war. It’s intriguing to see how many of the names of those who died defending an illiberal status quo were plainly African, not European.

Even though the Association was not founded on racist lines, the ceremony unfolding before me was an exclusively white event.

Why not a mixed-race Zimbabwean affair, which would really put the stamp on how those, both white and black from that part of southern Africa, had made it in a multicultural Australia?

The answer must lie in the witless choice by the organisers of September 13, Foundation Day for Rhodesia, as their commemoration date.

Lieutenant Teddy Double-Barrelled name didn’t just wander into the country of the Matabele and the Shona and in an absent minded fit, hoist the Union Jack.

The Jack was unfurled at the end of a military campaign run by the British South Africa Company under the aegis of Cecil Rhodes, Premier of the Cape Colony and the master-mind behind the de Beers diamond empire.

The unofficial warriors travelled with two wagons, each bearing a maxim gun, which gave a technological edge to the free-booting settlers that had eluded the British army only eleven years earlier at Isandhlwana. Hilaire Beloc was moved to write:

Whatever happens, we have got
The maxim gun, and they have not.

Unwittingly, prescient in the light of the tragedy of World War I where all parties had machine guns.

Why on earth would a Zimbabwean of indigenous background bother attending a function commemorating such a blatant land grab, performed by bloody terror and grotesquely imbalanced arms?

This is the point where the presence of the State Governor, Chris Dawson AC APM swims into view. If a lot of old white buffers want to sit around remembering, with advantages, their lives in a country that no longer exists, or their roles in a fiercely fought bush war, that’s up to them.

The line is crossed at the point that the commemorating is performed in public, in the presence of the State’s vice-regal representative.

This is the point of Governors and Governors-General, as Interpretation Acts all over the country remind us.

References in legislation to “the Governor” mean “the Cabinet”. For Dawson to be lending the imprimatur of the State to the remembering of a colony founded on the most dubious basis, and one that was entirely undone by history, a decision of Cabinet must have been involved, or at least the protocol unit in the Premier’s Department ticked the appropriate boxes.

This was the moment when a thoughtful bureaucrat, or even the Premier himself, would have said:

“Hold on, this Rhodesian Remembrance Day is being held on the day commemorating the foundation of the outlaw colony of Rhodesia. If the State of Western Australia is going to formally recognise its residents of former Zimbabwean origin, any ceremony is going to have to be on a date that recognises Zimbabwe, not its predecessor illegitimate colony. The accepted date for Zimbabwe’s emergence as a modern republic is 18 April 1980. So commemorations of former residency and now relocation to Western Australia can occur on that date.”

The failure to address this issue results in an undermining of Australia’s claim to be developing a multi-cultural society. Black former Zimbabweans are frozen out of a memorial service by a determination of former white settlers to parade the memory of white settlement’s arrival (at the point of a machine gun).

The old buffers are welcome to their memories in private or hire a community hall for Foundation Day, but don’t parade on that day on WA’s war memorial in the presence of the Governor.

Given the listing by the Rhodesian Association of the black dead, fallen in the Rhodesian Army, this is the least they could do.

The whole affair smacks of this country’s lackadaisical approach to immigration.  No wonder there’s been blow back in recent weeks, and not all of it from maddened Nazis.

The “Rhodesian” example is one of failure to think through the needs of a migrant group. But there are other examples of immigrant communities that need to have Australian mores explained at some length, and with care.

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It took some pressure to get the South Australian government to round up the Adelaide taxi service, which was operating under Sub-Continental rules: ordering a taxi had become a farce.

Bookings were either ignored (“we got a better offer”) or were way out of time. This merely reflected the standards that the immigrant drivers had been used to: every man for himself.

Until political pressure was applied (licensing is a useful tool) there was no explanation to these newly arrived drivers that the Australian community expected a reliable bookings service.

Sometimes it’s just a failure of those in management (now often on eye-glazing salaries) to explain and manage. I recently attended a public hospital to visit a dying friend, and on asking for his location, was greeted with a demand for his middle name, which I didn’t have. Date of birth? Nup.

Since my friend’s name was not a common one, I thought this was excessive. I asked to see the screen. His name appeared six times, variously with initials, name shortenings, etc. I was told by the recently arrived Australians, who were trying to be helpful, that there were six people with this name in the hospital.

No there weren’t. Without full names and date of birth nothing was going to happen – nada.

Management hadn’t bothered to leave its scented top floor suites to talk to these grunt workers about how it’s supposed to work: Middle names and dates of birth should not be required to locate patients in a hospital.

Apparently, we have a fallacy that passing laws will fix social issues, nothing more required. So we have mountains of anti-discrimination legislation protecting against racial abuse, but we have been too lazy to go the extra yard of engaging in education and thought as to application of official policy.

Time to wake up. The Nazis feed on discontent in a disaffected populace.