It’s a date that has become so contested in Australia that every year the number of opinion columns, protests and social media quarrels devoted to the issue continue to proliferate exponentially.
January 26.
Depending on one’s background and ideological stance, it’s known as Australia Day, Invasion Day, Survival Day or simply January 26, as Cricket Australia decided this year for the Big Bash League, much to Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s chagrin.
But, as academics expressed in a Monash Lens article, the day, which is supposed to be a celebration of national unity, has created a schism in our society that provokes contradictory emotions of patriotic pride and deep hurt and resentment.
For Monash University’s vice-chancellor Professor Margaret Gardner, Australia Day is a “problem that needs to be addressed”.
“Australia Day is a comparatively recent construct and is contentious because of course it celebrates when Europeans settled Australia and that, not surprisingly, represents displacement and invasion for many Indigenous Australians,” she said.
“I think we have an issue there that needs to be solved because the day means something to Indigenous peoples which causes great sadness and regret at its minimum. We can’t choose a day to be symbolically about who we are as a nation unless we’re all reasonably happy about what those symbols are.
“So I think we need to find another symbolic day that speaks to something that we collectively agree is important to all of us, one that speaks to all the threads of who we are; from the 60,000 years of Indigenous history, through European settlement and through to the many peoples who have come here and made Australia what it is today.”
But not all Australians are on board with the change of date.
For instance, an Ipsos poll conducted by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and Nine News showed that fewer than one-third of respondents were supportive of a date change and, unsurprisingly, poll responses largely ran along generational, geographic and political lines. To illustrate the generational divide, close to 50 per cent of respondents aged 18 to 24 backed a change of date, contrasting sharply to only 19 per cent of those in the over-55 age bracket.
But despite their own opinions on changing the date, the majority of the 1222 respondents believed the day would inevitably change within a decade.
For Monash University’s pro vice-chancellor of Indigenous Issues Professor Jacinda Elston, it is the “celebratory tone” of the day that leaves many First Nations peoples insulted and hurt.
“We as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, we actually want to celebrate being Australian, we want to celebrate Australia Day, but that’s not the right day for us to do it,” she said.
“For us, January 26, 1788 was the beginning of a process of invasion. When Captain Arthur Phillip placed the British flag on Gadigal land that morning, that represents our land being stolen from us.”
However, for Elston, simply changing the date will not resolve the myriad emotions and thoughts First Nations people have towards Australia Day.
Instead, the pro vice-chancellor (Indigenous Issues) proposed that the day could be reframed, or reimagined, as a day more of remembrance and respect, rather than unbridled celebration.
“The tone that is set around Anzac Day, that context of remembrance, remembering the legacy of those who fought in the wars, that’s exactly the same type of tone that many of us in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community would like to set for January 26.”
Until such changes occur, Elston contends, tension between non-Indigenous and Indigeous Australians will remain over the date.
“Lots of people say to me: ‘Why don’t Aboriginal people just get over these things’? Well, why doesn’t non-Indigenous Australia just get over it and actually start to do the thing that they can do, which is acknowledge us and help us all move on together.
“Why do we have to be the ones who get over it? Why can’t we get over it together?”
Elston believes the issues surrounding January 26 leaves First Nations peoples “treading water in a place of pain”.
“We need our country, our leaders of the country, our government and our politicians to actually take us on a journey that takes us through this into a place of healing.”