Changing the date is no longer enough
On Australia Day, we pretend colonialism is in our past, when it’s really inescapable
People might like to try to talk themselves into the idea that it’s not colonial conquest we celebrate on January 26. That’s just wishful thinking.
DR DANIELLE WOOD
AUSTRALIA Day is on the horizon. I guess some people are looking forward to a long weekend in the sun, maybe a camping trip or a barbecue and – pretty much incidentally to the above – the opportunity to get a bit warm and fuzzy about how great it is to be Australian.
Like many of my countryfolk, I’m susceptible to the odd bit of laid-back patriotism. I can allow myself to feel a little surge of pride while watching Qantas’s entertaining pre-flight information videos – especially during the part where the New York taxi driver knows his passenger is an Australian when she gets into the front seat of his cab.
I can even get a tiny bit misty-eyed while watching sweeping images of central Australian scenery set to the sound of Peter Allen singing “no matter how far, or how wide I roam”.
I’m happy and grateful to be Australian. But I can’t celebrate our country and the best of our national identity on January 26.
The arguments for changing the date are well-rehearsed and oft repeated. People might like to try to talk themselves into the idea that it’s not colonial conquest we celebrate on January 26.
That’s just wishful thinking. Consider the events leading up to January 26, 1938, the day Indigenous leaders designated a “Day of Mourning”. Australia Day organisers decided to stage a re-enactment to mark the 150th anniversary of the landing of Captain Arthur Phillip and wanted members of the Indigenous community to participate.
According to the National Museum of Australia, “Aboriginal people living in Sydney refused to take part so organisers brought in men from Menindee, in western NSW, and kept them locked up at the Redfern Police Barracks stables until the re-enactment took place. On the day itself, they were made to run up the beach away from the British – an inaccurate version of events”.
If this horrible scene seems unthinkable in 2022, it should be equally unthinkable that we try to sell January 26 as a unifying day of celebration.
Deep down, we must all know that a genuinely inclusive Australia, one committed to reconciliation, cannot have its national day on the anniversary of an invasion.
Changing the date would be easy. Too easy. Because while the date of our national day is a problem, it’s not the problem.
The problem is that ours is a nation with a history of colonial violence and dispossession, that we live in a society marred by inequality and prejudice, and that we are not as egalitarian, democratic or committed to a fair go as we would like to believe ourselves to be.
For a great many white Australians, looking honestly and directly at our history, and looking honestly and directly at the inequalities in contemporary society, is difficult and uncomfortable.
So, we don’t. We sing the national anthem, shower accolades on a bunch of high-achieving people, fry meat products in great abundance and try to pretend the whole ugly, overwhelming mess of colonialism is in our past, when in fact it’s permanently inescapable.
Changing the date won’t change the material conditions of people’s lives or fix the structural inequalities in our society. But symbols do matter.
Over time, we are shaped by the stories we tell, the words we use, the dates and events we remember, the rituals we enact.
Because of this, we need urgently to stop hosting a day of national celebration on January 26.
But is it enough simply to change the date? Is it enough to export the existing celebration to another square on the calendar?
For a nation a like ours, with the history it has, is there even a way of “celebrating” the past without
causing yet more pain and division? Or is there just too much to grieve, too much cause for shame, too much that can never be undone?
Perhaps, to be unifying, a day of national celebration needs to be reframed as aspirational: a time to collectively envisage the nation we wish to become, a day to reaffirm our values, a time for both optimism and resolve to create change.
Perhaps, to be truthful and genuine, a day of national celebration needs to be adequately balanced by a second national day: a more sombre one. Do we need, in addition to scrapping Australia Day on January 26, place more emphasis on a day such as May 26, National Sorry Day?
(Tangentially, in contemporary Australia, surely we can think of a better reason for a public holiday than celebrating the birthday of the King?)
There are many questions, answerable only by way of a long, challenging and profoundly inclusive conversation. All I know is that we can’t go on as we are. Changes must be made to the way we conceive of and celebrate our Australian identity, but those changes need to go beyond window dressing. They need to be big enough, deep enough, significant enough, and sincere enough to make a difference.
Changing the date, alone, won’t be enough.