Spare a thought for Australian representatives abroad who face awkward questions about what we celebrate on our National Day. It just goes to highlight the confusion and hypocrisy about pretending it was a noble venture by heroic and benign colonisers.
When I was an Australian ambassador, I was required to host an Australia Day reception. This was standard diplomatic practice. The size and scope varied but the format was fixed. A toast was proposed to the head of state of the host country who would respond with a toast to our head of state. A few words were said about the occasion and the relationship; these could be long winded and boring or short and to the point.
The toast was to the Queen of Australia. Despite all the obfuscation about the vice regal role we never toasted the Governor General as our head of state, which was at least accurate. This led to questions after the toast from various people about whether we were truly independent. We muttered something about yes, we were but this was historical and symbolic. Those mystically inclined talked about the Queen of Australia as a separate incarnation like a Hindu God. I don’t know how many people believed this tale which, as Pooh Bah in the Mikado put it, was designed to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing tale.
The real problem, however, arose when we were asked what event was being celebrated. For most countries it was their Independence Day, the monarch’s birthday or something of that nature. What event is Australia celebrating? Perhaps the arrival of the first illegal boat people? Or was it the beginning of British imperialism in our continent?
Invasion Day seems to be gaining currency and is also an accurate description of what we are celebrating. Needless to say, any ambassador who gave one of these as an answer would swiftly become DFAT representative in Oodnagalabi. Not a very flash idea for those interested in a career! So we were generally reduced to muttering something about it being our National Day and then having another drink.
Luckily, our national anthem was normally played by a band without words, which solved other potential problems. I must say, however, those who criticise the tune have never heard it played by the Sandinista Revolutionary Band in Nicaragua. They made it sound like La Marseillaise.
The Australian flag was prominently displayed, leading to questions about why the Union Jack was in the corner. The traditional answer had been that it represented our origins but this became increasingly difficult. Why not keep the flag as it is but replace the Union Jack by the Aboriginal flag? After all, they got here first – ab origine.
I hope, if only for the sake of those members of the Australian Diplomatic Service who are still in harness, that the current domestic debate will lead to much-needed changes.
Not a bad idea for the rest of us, too, whatever our origins!
Cavan Hogue is a former diplomat who has worked in Asia, Europe and the Americas as well as at the UN. He was Australian Ambassador to USSR and Russia, dually accredited to Ukraine. He also worked at ANU and Macquarie universities.
Comments
19 responses to “What do we really celebrate on Australia Day?”
I am sympathetic to the needs of our indigenous people, however, in the context of Australia Day 26 January we need to put this is some context!
-A poll released 18 January 21 by the IPA found that:
-69% of Australians support Australia Day being celebrated on January 26, with only 11% wanting the date changed.
-82% of Australians are proud to be Australian, only 5% are not.
-73% believe Australia has a history to be proud of, and only 11% disagree.
-In 2016, an estimated 798,365 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were in Australia, representing 3.3% of the total Australian population (ABS 2018b).
-An estimated $33.4 billion of Australian, State and Territory government expenditure was spent on services provided to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians in 2015-16, according to the 2017 Indigenous Expenditure Report; which may well need to be delivered more effectively to deal with indigenous problems/issues
We are a country made up of indigenous people, first arrivals (70% of the first fleet were convicts), post WWII immigration and later a multi cultural intake that makes up this wonderful country!
Lets us all celebrate this wonderful country on the 26th January together as Australians under one flag and one people!
A proud Australian
Trevor C Rowe AO
One of my earliest cross-cultural experiences was to be guided by an Indigenous couple on a visit to a pastoral property in the Kimberley. Not long after we had returned to town, the couple brought a ‘problem’ to me – the man had been ‘sung’, which was a new notion to me at the time, and within a week the man had died. Last night I watched Miriam Rose from Daly River being introduced as Senior Australian of the Year. She is well known for her “Dardirri” – a silent connection between her spirit and her country. At the least we as people who find ourselves in ‘Australia’ should be open to listening to one another. Not easy, given that the world of science has impressed itself on us all – take entropy, which represents our drift to individual indifferentiation, atomisation, from the top to the bottom, from the outspoken to the withdrawn, whatever our cultural identification has been till now.
Kevin Rudd has a very good suggestion in the Age today. Mske it the day when the High Court dismissed terra nullius as a myth! The kiwis have theirs on the day the Waitangi Treaty was signed.
yes, but the Treaty of Waitangi legally (and with commendable brevity) created a country out of two nations and, while it was followed by decades of bloody disagreement about what sovereignty/kingitanga) actually meant, a single layer of land rights. Mabo enshrined two layers of land rights into our law and doesn’t really resonate as the day for our national celebration.
No doubt you are right about the legal differences. But what we need is a cultural disruption to the entrenched winner takes all mentality.
Put legal niceties and impediments, real or imagined, aside. For instance Scomo: it’s the day when Australia changed forever! It’s a fact! The ingenuity of a marketing man who cares not for moral integrity! (Tobacco’s Marlborough man springs to mind.) Or Amanda Vanstane: it’s a wonderful country. Let’s just celebrate our achievements (yea, we settled on terra nullius! how clever, eh! And bugger the black’s dispossession, of course.)
A day of celebrations to mark the end of terra nullius is a story both the white and black custodians could learn to accept, as a new dawn. A sense of renewal, a move from the dark past.
The White Australia policy had to be buried overnight for us to begin a new start with the soon-to-be decolonised SE Asia, and for us to have a straight face on the UN stage. Changing the Date might be just as wise: for us to begin a fresh start with Asia and China in particular – that inconvenient trading behemoth, no longer the sick man of Asia.
It seems a cultural disruption is at foot. The four Aussies of 2021 are all social activists. Scomo and Vanstone look like a pair of well packaged edible Christmas figurines with their best-before-date well hidden.
Well, indeed, having to explain to foreigners what the 26th January actually commemorates is very instructive. I completely sympathize with Indigenous Australians’ feelings about what the day commemorates – but not being Indigenous myself, I have always felt it’s not my argument to make. On the other hand, I have for decades wondered why on earth I, as a Tasmanian, should be expected to think that the founding of Sydney signified anything to me. By all means let the people of Sydney – and if they want to, the rest of NSW, mark the founding of their capital – but why should I care? The 4th July doesn’t commemorate the founding of New York, or Boston; the 14th July isn’t the anniversary of the first Gauls turning up on the banks of the Seine and saying to themselves, “c’est une grand place pour un ville – laissez-nous mettre Paris içi”: why should our supposed ‘national day’ elevate one place above all our others? Of course, Sydney folks have been dictating the way Australia interprets our history for decades – hence schoolchildren all over Australia are taught that Captain Cook “discovered” Australia even though he only got to the east coast of Australia using maps drawn up by Abel Tasman 128 years earlier, and he wasn’t even the first Englishman (let alone the first European) to set foot on Australian shores. I’m working today, as I always do, and will continue to do so until we have a national day that means something to all of us
Having attended many Australia Day receptions overseas, I have to say they weren’t all bad, in fact some did Australia proud. Most guests had no difficulty understanding that 26 January marked the anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet.
All you are really saying is that when you associate with people who think similarly to you, you then tend to think all Australians think similarly to you and your acquaintances.
To me, Australia Day celebrates the inauspicious beginning of a settlement consisting mainly of people rejected by their country, who, under skilled leadership went on to build a better society than the one the that turned them out. The leaders should not be forgotten. They were naval and military officers of the Age of Enlightenment, skilled in moulding a workable society, a ship’s crew or an army unit, or a new colony, out of the dregs of Britain. Their bad side, which they have also passed down, was the excessive reliance on punishment, and the intolerance, vengefulness, and xenophobia of militarism.
Australia became Australia on 1 January 1901. Until then we were a collection of British colonies. Commemorating the establishment of a British penal settlement as our national day conforms with our view of the English queen as our head of state.
USA’s national day, 4 July, marks the occasion when 13 colonies came together and declared their independence from Britain – and became a nation.
India has two national days, Independence Day, is on 15 August, the day that India declared its independence from Britain, and Republic Day is 26 January when it formally achieved republic status – and became a nation.
Canada’s national day, 1 July, marks the formal confederation of three colonies (Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) – when it became a nation.
But Australia? We mark as our national day the arrival of convicts who were otherwise a major inconvenience to the British penal system. These unfortunates were ‘parked’ as far away from Britain as possible; the officials in London were just ridding themselves of problems.
What a pity our founding fathers decided to establish Australia on New Years Day, a public holiday so close to Christmas. Perhaps we could have otherwise had a national day that does indeed recognise when we became a nation.
What indeed do we celebrate on Australia Day? Well, given that we currently fix the date as 26 January, obviously it is the day in 1788 when a motley collection of mariners and convicts from Europe assembled in Port Jackson, which is absurd indeed. Perhaps it should be 20 January which is the day in 1788 when the First Fleet rendezvoused in Botany, but perhaps Botany Bay isn’t sufficiently iconic. Technically it should be 1 January because that’s the day in 1901 when Australia became a country but that would mean finding another public holiday. Because 26 January has become so divisive as a date, to the point where it intrudes on sensible discussions about indigenous reconciliation, why not make the last Friday (or the last Monday) of January as the day for Australia Day? What could be more Australian than all of us getting together on a gazetted holiday to celebrate our country on the last day of our summer holiday season?
Well, indeed, having to explain to foreigners what the 26th January actually commemorates is very instructive. I completely sympathize with Indigenous Australians’ feelings about what the day commemorates – but not being Indigenous myself, I have always felt it’s not my argument to make. On the other hand, I have for decades wondered why on earth I, as a Tasmanian, should be expected to think that the founding of Sydney signified anything to me. By all means let the people of Sydney – and if they want to, the rest of NSW, mark the founding of their capital – but why should I care? The 4th July doesn’t commemorate the founding of New York, or Boston; the 14th July isn’t the anniversary of the first Gauls turning up on the banks of the Seine and saying to themselves, “c’est une grand place pour un ville – laissons-nous mettre Paris içi”: why should our supposed ‘national day’ elevate one place above all our others? Of course, Sydney folks have been dictating the way Australia interprets our history for decades – hence schoolchildren all over Australia are taught that Captain Cook “discovered” Australia even though he only got to the east coast of Australia using maps drawn up by Abel Tasman 128 years earlier, and he wasn’t even the first Englishman (let alone the first European) to set foot on Australian shores. I’m working today, as I always do, and will continue to do so until we have a national day that means something to all of us
Saul,
Our family too make a point of working on Australia day; 4th generation farmers we find it good for the spirit to avoid all this connived razzmatazz. I like Malcolm Turnbull’s idea, just put up with it for the present and then make Australia day the day we become a Republic. By then Rishi Sunak may well be the first Asian Prime Minister of Great Britain, Kamala Harris the first coloured woman, President of America and the Liberal Party might be thinking, living where we do, about ditching white supremacy!
All that Australians attempt to celebrate on Australia day is the forceful destruction of the First Australian’s way of life, the death of many of their people, and their replacement by white folk who are now so hypocritical that they reject anyone else coming here (particularly refugees) and the original owners as well.
Indigenous Australians are like refugees in their own country.
If that is not an act of white supremacism, and complete bias towards the darker skin original inhabitants, I don’t know what is.
We do not seriously acknowledge the original owners right to their land and culture, but enforce our invented right to force our own culture on anyone who immigrates here, and affirm ourselves as the sole owners. If peter Dutton doesn’t like you, you can even be thrown out of the country at his discretion. Oi oi oi.
On top of that Aboriginal people just get in the way of the voracious mining industry. Companies like Rio Tinto and BHP may dip their heads and pretend they are remorseful when damaging Aboriginal cultural and sacred sites, but right at this moment they are doing the same cultural desecration of American Indian reserves in the US in opening up new Trump endorsed copper mines. Indigenous folk just keep getting in the way. How dare they.
“Australia the greatest country in the world?”
It cannot be until it resolves its white superiority reign and acknowledges the truth of our history, and opposing that is currently rivetted in federal Coalition government. Plenty of Sir Joe supporters within it still.
And wherever the ‘white bwana’ went in the world with his bloody sword and guns, he is going to have to make amends and acknowledge those acts as the first step in healing. It is not going to go away, the tables are turning, the histories are available to all today. The natives are becoming restless everywhere.
People like Amanda Vanstone, who was given a space in the SMH (Australia’s newest liberal party newspaper) yesterday, says it should all be about ‘what we have achieved’. In other words, British imperialist views continue to plague us by heartless people like Vanstone and many others in the racist Liberal Party and elsewhere who don’t seem to realise that the first ‘achievement’ was forcing the Aboriginal people off their land – man, woman, and child – often by gunshot and massacre as if they were vermin, stealing their water and forcing them into starvation.
I acknowledge those Australians like myself who see the need for justice to be done and genuine healing to take place. When white settlers and explorers spread throughout Australia, some who were not close minded, recorded that aboriginal society was based on sharing, community, and consensus decision making. No one was ever isolated from the group nor the collective benefits of being part of the group according to the culture. While white Australia may dream that we are the superior culture and ‘achievers’, our society is falling apart through greed, unfettered capitalism, heavily promoted selfishness, isolation, fascism, and the cult of the individual or ‘me’.
Yes change the flag as you say – keep the Southern Cross but also add more randomly placed stars of milky way.
“According to Aboriginal legend, emus were creator spirits that used to fly and look over the land. To spot the emu, look south to the Southern Cross; the dark cloud between the stars is the head, while the neck, body and legs are formed from dust lanes stretching across the Milky Way”
You are correct George. Not only the SMH but all Fairfax papers are now rags propagating Liberal Party rubbish under the direction of Peter Costello.
Just cancelled my SMH subscription! It’s nothing like the old Fairfax. A pity!
The Australian media landscape has been destroyed by greed and the failure to reinvest, two sides of the same coin. What would Peter Costello know about reinvesting to make a company prepared for the future. His experience is in using a once in a lifetime boom to buy votes to keep Howard in government past his use by date. And now he is using what little is left of Fairfax to keep the Liberals in power.
Well I recall that growing up Australia day was just the last long weekend in Summer – a chance to pack up the camp and return home in time to get the kids back to school. There were no flags or celebrations.
Then in the 1980s it started to change into this absurd national day. Not even a long weekend. it is of course really NSW day, not Australia day. I suggest let NSW keep January 26 if they must but we should find a better day for Australia day. January 1 (turn New Year’s eve into a public holiday) or July 9 could work,
If the Australian Tories can give Margaret Court another gong, then we should be allowed to call out their flag, head of state, and national day, for what they actually are. White Christian Nationalism.