Now that most of the musket smoke has been blown away after the Australia Day (or “Invasion Day”) celebrations, it’s time to take stock and survey the battlefield.
People will tell you that the gazetting of Australia Day as a national public holiday is only a relatively recent innovation, and that is partly true—1988 was the year when it was finally formalised to mark the 200th anniversary of the settlement at Sydney Cove. This is one weapon in the armoury of those who advocate a change of date.
But the truth is that Jan. 26 has been celebrated in several states since the early days of European settlement, both before and after the Federation, sometimes under other names. “Foundation Day” was one such, often used in the 19th century.
Opposition to the celebration, and demands to change the date, have increased in intensity over the years. Evert year, the voices grow louder as the day approaches, not only of Indigenous people but of many others who claim to share their sense of loss and frustration.
In itself, this is perfectly reasonable. A European power did claim and assume ownership of the whole continent without regard to the wishes of the original inhabitants, and this claim was rigorously and often cruelly enforced by the new settlers. Nobody denies that.
But the day commemorates historical facts. On Jan. 26, 1788, an advance party from the British Isles introduced European civilisation to the Australian continent on a permanent footing and began a process that would grow exponentially into a new nation.
Cancelling Australia Day
The campaign to Change the Date began, as it usually does, several weeks before the actual event. Many in the mainstream media, most notably the two government-funded broadcasters ABC and SBS, resumed the annual call to cancel Australia Day and obliterate it from the national memory.Is that putting it too strongly? Sadly, I think not.
Activists in the Indigenous community, backed by their non-Indigenous supporters, have been loud in their condemnation of any kind of celebration on the 26th, including the well-established practice of holding naturalisation ceremonies for new Australian citizens.
They gain a little more ground each year. Several local government councils (invariably the stamping grounds of the most feeble-minded politicians in any jurisdiction) have now determined that future ceremonies will never be held on that day.
The first significant incident that came to my notice in the leadup to the campaign was a news report on SBS TV (a headline news report, mind, not an opinion piece) about a group of immigrants from India who noted with contrived dismay that India’s Republic Day also happens to be celebrated on Jan. 26.
This, of course, is pure coincidence, but why let facts spoil a good grievance?
They deplored what they saw as the irony that India celebrates its freedom from an imperial power on the very same day that Australia celebrates its “conquest” by that very same power.
No amount of wishing changes facts. The sad truth is that authentic Aboriginal culture is unperceived by most Australians who live in our cities and towns and that there is no aspect of our daily lives that is impacted by it.
Even among proponents of the Aboriginal cause, few who advocate renaming towns and regions take the trouble actually to learn an Aboriginal language. Most of those languages are, in many cases, now extinct.
According to the last census, around 5 percent of the population claimed to “identify” as Aboriginal. But Aboriginal Elders are, in truth, embarrassed by the increasing number of false and spurious claims, for they know that such claims weaken and compromise the campaign for a Voice.
Governments Choosing Not to Stand Ground
Perhaps the worst thing to emerge from this and so many other controversies between the so-called “left” and “right” is the willingness of governments of every type not only to cave into the views of very small minorities but even (increasingly) to try to silence dissenters.An example of the former is New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet’s multi-million-dollar Aboriginal flag on the Sydney Harbour Bridge: it probably won’t win him a single vote (and may lose him many), but he didn’t dare say no.
Examples of the latter are too numerous to name, and the list of banned topics and opinions around Aboriginal sensitivities—as well as gender transitioning, abortion, and euthanasia—seems to be growing apace.
It’s becoming a dangerous world for anyone who shows the first sign of swimming against the current.
Where to from here? Annual re-enactments of Arthur Phillip’s landing at Sydney Cove, once common enough on Jan. 26, are a thing of the past. It would be both foolish and insensitive to bring them back.
But the events of that day, and their significance for the unfolding of Australia’s future, cannot be forgotten or denied.
After decades of immigration, the proportion of Aboriginal DNA in Australia’s gene pool is growing smaller with each passing year, but the foundational part Aboriginals played in our nation, sometimes tragic, sometimes noble, deserves to be remembered too.
Nobody alive today is guilty of the sins of previous generations. On Australia Day, we ought to honour both traditions and disparage neither.
