You can always tell when it’s summer in Australia (even when it’s as miserable and dull a one as this): the cricket’s on the telly, the news starts hawking luridly coloured weather maps to try and frighten us, and the lefties are whinging about Australia Day again. The worst culprits are local council numpties who, instead of just looking after the local ovals and seeing that the bins get emptied, use Australia Day as a bully pulpit for their empty-headed virtue-signalling.
Naturally, Anthony Albanese, old hard-leftist that he is (his supporters were nicknamed “the Bolsheviks” by his own party), is giving them a shiny new megaphone.
The decision effectively to abandon the defence of Australia Day on January 26 is one of the worst and saddest moments in modern Australia. And it’s surely among the worst decisions of the new Labor government.
Whoa, easy, tiger. The worst decisions of the Albanese government is a hotly contested list — and they’ve only been in office six months. Anthony Albanese has even been in the country for some of them. I mean, take your pick: letting a pair of former Tamil Tigers who’d lost every court case stay in Australia just because they squeezed out a couple of photogenic anchor babies; signing up Australia to pay “climate reparations” to mendicant banana republics; wrecking the nation’s energy infrastructure… the list goes on.
The Australia Day decision does stand out, though, for two reasons: it’s yet another broken election promise, and yet another clear sign that Albanese is rusted on to the hard left.
Labor in opposition promised it would keep Australia Day on January 26. It has now contradicted that in effect if not in precise legalistic terms. It has said local councils can now hold citizenship ceremonies on days other than January 26. Several businesses have followed up by saying they will offer staff the alternative of taking a public holiday on some other day than January 26.
Which is a piss-weak piece of virtue-signalling, even for the left. If they really believed their bullshit, they would skip having an Australia Day holiday altogether. All they’re really doing is trying to cut off their employees from having a four-day weekend, by having a day off on Friday 27, as well as the gazetted holiday on Thursday 26.
But even appearing to give in to the left is always a bad idea — it only ever encourages the bastards.
The opposition’s immigration spokesman, Dan Tehan, is surely right to say this decision effectively lays the groundwork for the abolition of January 26 as Australia Day. I think Tehan’s analysis is correct and this represents one of the saddest, most depressing of countless victories for the truly destructive wrecking march of identity politics through Australian civic life.
The minute Tehan made his charge, Albanese reaffirmed that his government supported Australia Day, but would no longer compel councils to hold citizenship ceremonies only on that day. But Labor never mentioned this option before the election. To claim this doesn’t break the pre-election promise to stick with January 26 is the kind of hair-splitting, logic-chopping, dare I use the term Jesuitical, too-smart-by-half justification that erodes the basic trust and good faith of democracy.
More importantly, if they really want to “change the date”, then they are obliged to offer an alternative. January 1st? Sure, it’s the date of Federation, but we already have a holiday then — robbing the nation of an extra day off is, dare I say, “un-Australian”. Besides, if they think that’ll mollify whingeing Aboriginal activists, they’re kidding themselves. The perpetually-aggrieved will only argue that this was the day they were disenfranchised for 67 years by Section 51 of the Constitution.
On the other hand, for all the factually-incorrect whining about “invasion”, January 26 was the day civilisation came to Australia.
January 26 commemorates the landing of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove in 1788. It represents the birth of the modern Australian nation. It celebrates the first introduction of modern institutions into Australian life. These institutions include the rule of law, parliamentary government, the judiciary, a free media, freedom of speech, diverse power centres and national unification.
The Australian
Which, for all the bad that happened, surely beats scratching in the dirt for yams and trying not to get speared by the neighbouring tribe, or clubbed with a waddy if you’re a woman. Not one Aboriginal Australian today lives an authentically pre-1788 lifestyle — for good reason.
The biggest problem, though, is that while most Australians love their nation and are perfectly happy with Australia Day, the tiny minority of the worst activists are full of passionate bile. Compare the truly multicultural crowds out happily waving their little flags around the barbie on Australia Day with the pinch-faced, pasty white cliques of tilty-headed leftists browbeating gutless local councils to “change the date”.
They don’t really care about Australia Day, of course: all they care about is hating Australia and bullying everyone who doesn’t.