If the goal of Australia Day is to advertise national unity and social cohesion, writes Dave Donovan, then it ain’t working.
THERE’S AN outdated noticed about vacationers in Ireland pulling as much as the aspect of the highway to ask an area yokel methods to get to Galway, to obtain the reply, “Well, I wouldn’t start from here.”
And so it’s with Australia Day. If the goal of this annual vacation is to advertise national unity and that new buzzword “social cohesion”, then we definitely wouldn’t begin from the place we are actually. Because clearly, as a nation, we’ve gotten a bit off observe and now we’re misplaced.
This week’s Australia Day “celebrations” have been a certain signal of that and have been, to make use of the native vernacular (dutifully imported from America), “an absolute shitshow”. Nazis have been peeling off Nazi salutes, being arrested for spouting antisemitic hate at “March for Australia” anti-immigration rallies and bashing peaceable anti-racism protesters all around the nation.
This charming day was attended by a number of politicians, together with White supremacist One Nation chief Pauline Hanson. She was interviewed by well-known broadcasting drunkard Karl Stefanovic, who used the chance to defend Australia Day as a “great event”, deride “woke culture” and inform dissenters to “lighten up”. This was met by widespread approval on social media by the “Love it or Leave!!” crowd, accompanied by thousands and thousands of Australian flag emojis, and much more exclamation marks and spelling errors.
The solar lastly set on all this household enjoyable in Perth, when a bomb of shrapnel and nails was lobbed right into a crowd at an Indigenous “Day of Mourning” occasion. A 31-year-old White man was arrested. Mercifully, the “device”, because it was demurely described by authorities, didn’t go off. Nor was the incident described by investigators as a case of home terrorism, presumably as a result of it wasn’t directed at White individuals.
Looking again on the vacation, it appears clear Australia Day is just not actually doing an excellent job bringing us collectively, besides maybe for lovers of Western civilisation to share insults, fists, hobnailed boots and probably lethal ordnance with much less pale Australians and their supporters. So a lot unity, one might actually explode.
Of course, in case you wished to get to Australia Day being a one among widespread social inclusion and national unity, you definitely wouldn’t have fun it on the 26th of January, or it could be extra precisely recognized, the anniversary of the Botany Bay British Convict Colony Establishment Day of 1788.
It was the day that the New South Wales Colony might hint its delivery, definitely, however not Australia. Australia was Federated as a dominion (not a nation) by an Act of the British Westminster Parliament on 1 January 1901.
Various occasions have occurred since then that persuade most individuals we are actually a nation, resembling Gallipoli, the Statute of Westminster and the Australia Act, amongst others. But we aren’t actually, not fairly, since we nonetheless retain the British monarch as our head of state and maintain the Union Jack within the nook of our flag. This flag is, technically, a blue British ensign with some stars on it. In truth, it’s virtually an identical to the New Zealand flag and was as soon as described by comic Jerry Seinfeld as “Britain at night”. Just the factor to wave on our “national” day.
In any case, for a national day, you definitely wouldn’t have fun the anniversary of a day when invading imperialists lobbed up on one among six Australian colonies with just a few boatloads of minor criminals in chains, took possession within the identify of the King and planted that flag we nonetheless maintain within the nook.
Most particularly, on condition that it’s seen by the unique inhabitants of the land because the day of their dispossession. A day of calamity, which thereafter led to the collapse of their historic and deeply non secular 60,000-year tradition, calamitous genocidal wars, heinous massacres and ongoing abuse, privation and persecution. If you wished to advertise therapeutic and national cohesion, it’s exhausting to think about a worse one. Downright disrespectful and overtly divisive.
Especially given it hasn’t even been the day on which we have now at all times celebrated Australia Day and, the truth is, solely due to uniformity in Australia in 1994. It isn’t even conventional! So, you wouldn’t begin on 26 January in case you wished to get to national unity and social cohesion.
But let IA let you know slightly secret, which you most likely knew anyway. The individuals who appear to like that day essentially the most and demand it should be celebrated on 26 January aren’t inquisitive about social cohesion in any respect. In truth, they need much less national unity, no more.
If you wished national unity, you wouldn’t have a Federal Government appoint an antisemitism envoy with shut hyperlinks to a bunch that lobbied in opposition to an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. And you wouldn’t move legal guidelines to outlaw antisemitic hate speech particularly, ignoring different types of hate speech that are demonstrably much more prevalent in our society.
This deal with Jews has made them not much less of a goal, however reasonably extra of a goal in our society, for the notion of getting a privileged place within the corridors of energy. Of course, these legal guidelines, as mentioned in final week’s editorial, led to the break-up of the Coalition, at the least partially as a consequence of many of their group wanting the choice to have interaction in vitriolic speech in opposition to these they see because the enemy, resembling Indigenous Australians and immigrants — particularly these of the Islamic religion.
This has been amply demonstrated by the arrest of the Nazi spouting antisemitic hate speech on the March for Australia. It has been proven by two former Australian Prime Ministers, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, spouting hateful anti-Islamic rhetoric during the last week. Of course, each these Anglophile Christian lay-preachers have been notable for his or her pitiless persecution of immigrants in offshore detention services in workplace.
Right once we want optimistic management that brings us collectively and unites us, right here’s Scott Morrison scapegoating your entire Muslim Australian group once more. pic.twitter.com/qNMkth4HRS
— Kon Karapanagiotidis (@Kon__K) January 29, 2026
It has additionally been proven by legal trickster James “Ashbygate” Ashby, Pauline Hanson’s sidekick in her anti-Indigenous, anti-immigrant One Nation occasion, this week praising Trump and condemning Islam as a hateful ideology, and calling for Muslims to be expelled from Australia of their lots of of hundreds. Read Dr Abul Rizvi’s article on these pages about this train in “national unity” HERE.
If these individuals need a unified nation, they need it to be a unified White Australia, prefer it was previous to the Seventies. But that can by no means occur, so the truth is what they need is just not “One Nation” however a divided nation, during which they will spout their rhetoric and appeal to the ignorant to their divisive dog-whistling hyperbole and dangerous rhetoric.
If you wished a unified nation, you wouldn’t begin with politicians expressing these hateful views for cynical goals, exhibiting an utter lack of civic duty and good religion. They don’t love Australia. They love energy. And to get energy, they’ll rip this land aside.
We can’t get all the way in which to national unity simply, not from right here. But the very first thing we must always do is head in direction of altering the date. After that, let’s get the map out, not take heed to some loudmouth fool on the aspect of the highway, as we have now been doing in latest instances.
This is an excerpt from the Independent Australia subscribers editorial. To obtain this in full in your electronic mail inbox weekly, together with hyperlinks to all the opposite tales revealed throughout the week, subscribe HERE.
Related Articles
Follow IA founder Dave Donovan on X/Twitter @davrosz and Bluesky @davrosz.bsky.social, Independent Australia on Bluesky @independentaus.bsky.social, X/Twitter @independentaus and Facebook HERE.
Buy IA’s Ashbygate guide by investigations editor Ross Jones in exhausting or delicate copy copy HERE.
Support impartial journalism Subscribe to IA.
Follow IA founder Dave Donovan on X/Twitter @davrosz and Bluesky @davrosz.bsky.social, Independent Australia on Bluesky @independentaus.bsky.social, X/Twitter @independentaus and Facebook HERE.
Buy IA’s Ashbygate guide by investigations editor Ross Jones in exhausting or delicate copy copy HERE.
Support impartial journalism Subscribe to IA.
Related Articles
