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My experience has been that outside the small group of professionals and academics who live on the politics of deference, most people don't notice and don't care. I work in a role where I give weekly talks, and the organisation officially prefers an acknowledgement of country before every talk. I mouthed my way through them for the first couple of months, but then gave up, as nobody reacted or seemed to notice. I have since not done an acknowledgement for around a year and not once has anybody even mentioned their absence to me, much less complained. Likewise one of my managers once had a few compulsory seminars about reconciliation within the organisation, brought that to a team meeting, I offered to help (because I have had much more training with this nonsense), and I never heard a peep from her again, nor was any other thing actually done on the ground. The most we do in practice is put up posters and things during NAIDOC Week and similar events, but there is at least a 50% chance that when that happens, people will put up the Aboriginal flag upside down. (In their defence, it is really tempting because the Australian Aboriginal flag's correct orientation looks wrong. Intuitively you want the black on the bottom.) My workplace is heavily Asian so it may not be entirely representative - in my experience Asian migrants generally don't give a damn about Aboriginal people - but I would be shocked if it's completely off-base.
I think that the situation is basically:
A small group of intellectual and media elites like Aboriginal representation, deference, welcomes to country, and so on.
Elite or aspirational white Australians generally defer to this. They imitate the behaviour of the most prestigious class, the media, and so on. They will generally go along with or support any or all symbolic statements, but will get cold feet whenever it might affect their hip pockets.
Lower-middle and lower class white Australians generally find this all pointless, or they actively resent it. They will usually not sign on with it, though they will sit quietly in the back of a compulsory work meeting and zone out if need be.
Non-white non-Aboriginal Australians generally either do not understand these issues, or just don't care about them one way or the other. "What does this have to do with us?" is a common refrain. That said they won't get involved or do anything either - they seem to largely accept it as some weird thing that white Australians do.
Aboriginals themselves... genuinely poor Aboriginals either don't notice or don't care, because they have more pressing issues, but will be willing to do a smoking ceremony or a welcome dance if the whitefellas ask for it. Middle class or aspiring Aboriginals are more likely to see that they can benefit from the politics of deference. I think most see it as white hypocrisy, but it's generally not advantageous to point that out, so only a few do that. But pushing the politics of dfference can be a path to individual or career success, so some do use that.
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