Our attitudes towards Australia Day are in a state of flux and it’s not hard to see why

Younger people have a more negative attitude towards January 26. Picture Getty

A day off at the tail end of the summer holidays. A day for reflection, and pride. A day for a barbeque with friends and family. A day that means nothing much, really. Or, a day to mourn, and rage, and feel frustration at how little has changed in Australia beyond rhetoric.

The meaning of Australia Day is now, officially, in a state of flux. Societal views on our national day, marked on the anniversary of the landing of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove, are shifting. They have been shifting for some time but, like many major societal upheavals, it seems, all of a sudden, to be a fast-moving discourse. Many of us remember the days before Australia Day was even a public holiday, when the conversation around its meaning barely registered. But its alternate meaning – a symbol of the adverse impacts of British settlement on Indigenous Australians – has always been present.

Today, it’s clear that the tide is turning on the idea of celebrating, outright, what Indigenous Australians view as the start of their dispossession. Most countries have a day of the year on which they celebrate their nation in some way or another. But while support for changing the date for Australia Day is still, by and large, a minority position, the ways in which the day is marked, in both spirit and aesthetically, are ripe for evolution.

Traditionally, the physical symbols Australians have adopted to represent the day lean to the Anglo – Australian flags (featuring the Union Jack), barbeques, beer, picnics.

Acknowledgements of country and the gradual introduction of Indigenous words into official speeches and ABC news bulletins may be almost commonplace, but we are a long way from New Zealand, where Maori culture is intricately woven into the nation’s psyche.

January 26 is also a day on which a proud cohort of largely new migrants receive citizenship status conferred by the Prime Minister in the national capital, while nominees from a broad swathe of our modern society gather to hear who will be named Australian of the Year.

Meanwhile, public servants will now be allowed to work on January 26 if they do not wish to celebrate Australia Day, after the Labor government reversed a previous government directive which forced APS staff to not work on the public holiday.

It’s no wonder many Australians take the day as an opportunity to, at the very least, contemplate the country’s next steps when it comes to celebrating our community, while reflecting on what’s been lost.

As we reported in Forum on Saturday, the increasingly split views about January 26 are seen especially here in Canberra, where nationally broadcast Australia Day ceremonies are held just a couple of hundred metres across the lake from Invasion Day protests.

While the official ceremonies and celebrations in the capital are organised and funded by the federal government, ACT events are low-key, the territory government acknowledging the broad range of views in the Canberra community.

And, most tellingly, a recent ACT survey showed most respondents either not celebrating Australia Day or feeling neutral about the whole thing.

It also showed younger people had a more negative attitude towards January 26. As with many societal shifts, it’s often the younger generation who herald a change in attitude.

More from Letters to the Editor

More from Letters to the Editor

More from Letters to the Editor