Australia Day is not beer and barbecues for everybody. A tweak of the date could make all the difference. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
Peter Dutton is nothing if not predictable.
As we dawdle towards the end of the summer break with a federal election in May looming over us, Dutton has reminded us of the importance, nay the sanctity, of Australia Day.
He’ll force local councils to hold citizenship ceremonies on our contrived and contentious national day, which may be fine for the British ascendency, of which I am one, but is a tad traumatic for citizens whose ancestors’ roots in this country go back a bit more than a couple of hundred years.
He even dragooned migrants into the argument, saying those who took the oath on the 26th hold it sacred.
Some might but I hope they take the stars-and-stripes approach to citizenship with a grain of salt and think more deeply about what it is to be Australian.
Dutton probably believes his own lines but the Australia Day polemic is just one of his pre-election culture war forays or, as Katy Gallagher puts it, lighting little fires around the place to grab a headline.
The most divisive politician to vie for the prime ministership even says his call is about Australians putting aside all that woke bother about the impacts of colonisation and uniting as one people on the big day.
Anyone who believes that is a candidate for a Nigerian inheritance.
Personally, I’m dreading the torrent of divisive muck that will flow through the nation’s social media sewers in the lead-up to the election, designed to stir fear and resentment a la Trump, inspired by Detective Dutton’s ”commonsense” observations on Australian society.
Or is he inspired by them? It’s hard to tell anymore.
But that is the template that proved so successful for him during the Voice referendum campaign.
I’ve never had much time for Australia Day, apart from the holiday and taking the kids to Commonwealth Park for the fun and games.
Flag-waving, hand-on-heart patriotism has always seemed decidedly un-Australian. Something the Americans need to do. In this country, prescribing how we mark events such as this has always seemed overbearing and cringeworthy.
Yes, John Howard and his successors have wrapped themselves in the flag and by implication questioned the loyalty of others less demonstrative, but this was and is contrived and inorganic.
Then, there is the Indigenous question. No-one can turn the clock back and British settlement is the pivotal part of the modern national story.
But for those who were here first, it was a blood-soaked disaster that continues to wreak havoc through the generations. The likes of Dutton refuse to really acknowledge this.
It would be so much more relaxed and comfortable if they could just put it all behind them and move on, just like Jacinta Price and Warren Mundine appear to have.
The wound in the side of Australia cannot really heal without a change in thinking, a true understanding of our history and going forward on terms that satisfy everyone.
Nailing Australia Day to the 26th denies this wound and in effect pokes a stick in it every year.
But when I look around for another date in a crowded calendar, I struggle to find one that will have any resonance.
Federation was on 1 January, 1901, but that of course is already a holiday. The other main holidays have some seasonal basis, and finding a meaningful day in between that can be tacked on to a weekend, which is what we all really want, is difficult.
I don’t want to lose a summer holiday, so why not make it the last weekend of January – Friday or Monday – before the new school term starts?
As it is now, Australia Day marks the unofficial end of summer, when everything gets back to the working normal. So why not disengage the day from the divisive 26th but retain its seasonality and forge a new tradition that doesn’t ignore the obvious starting point for modern Australia or sever our British roots but incorporates more fully our Indigenous heritage and the migrant experience that continues to shape the nation.
Or leaves us to mark the blessings of this country in our own way.
In the land of the long weekend, it’s worth a crack.
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