Sydney’s Lord Mayor has angered citizens of Australia’s largest city and Prime Minister John Howard by decorating the town hall with a single tree in a modest festive show seen as an effort to avoid offending non-Christian immigrants.
Talkback radio programs have been inundated for two days with angry callers accusing left-leaning independent Lord Mayor Clover Moore of pandering to political correctness with paltry festive season decorations.
The Daily Telegraph highlighted the row with pictures comparing Sydney’s decor with that of London, New York and Paris. Its front-page banner headline read: ”As the great cities of the world light up, Sydney asks… WHERE’S OUR CHRISTMAS.”
The symbol of Sydney’s Christmas is a lonely tree on the town hall balcony, the paper said, adding: ”2004 is the year Sydney forgot Christmas and across the city, people are infuriated.”
Moore, explaining the council’s Christmas decorations with banners in eight languages, said on Tuesday it ”embraces all cultural and religious communities at Christmas time and tries to bring Christmas magic alive” — especially for the children.
Prime Minister John Howard weighed into the controversy on Friday, saying: ”This is political correctness from central casting. It is unbelievable.
”This is the ridiculous thing about this blanding out of any kind of distinctive identity that we might have.”
New South Wales state Premier Bob Carr urged Moore to do more to ensure Sydney lived up to its reputation as a world-class city that rivals other international cities with its Christmas decor.
Sydney, with its population of almost four million, has a large multicultural community with immigrant groups representing all major religions.
But callers to radio stations, including non-Christians, have argued that few if anyone objects to a Christian festival being celebrated with fairy lights and Santa Claus decorations.
Dan Mullens, producer of the Alan Jones show on Sydney radio station 2GB, said the program had been flooded with angry callers.
”We have had hundreds of callers, every one protesting about this,” Mullens told French news agency AFP. ”It has just been enormous.
”It is something people feel very, very strongly about and most of them are telling us they believe Ms Moore is pandering to political correctness. This is essentially still a Christian society. People like Christmas, no matter what their religion is.”
A spokesperson for Moore admitted there had been complaints but said it was all a misunderstanding and nothing to do with political correctness.
”We have actually increased expenditure on Christmas this year,” the spokesperson said. ”But we get both sides, with people saying they would expect more Christmas decoration and others ringing up saying ‘Don’t go spending our rates on Christmas decorations’.” – Sapa-AFP