Nick Ryan: We need to rethink the significance of Australia Day – and the date

AUSTRALIA Day should be re-evaluated to embrace what we stand for now as well as our past – and that means going beyond white settlement, says Nick Ryan

I remember a time when the real importance attached to the celebration of Australia Day was the scheduling of a Test match at the Adelaide Oval.

That was well before we awkwardly embraced a kind of muscular patriotism that manifests itself in the tattooed appropriation of the Southern Cross, the proliferation of Australian flag bikinis that claim the wearer’s right breast for Britain, and the idea that the most appropriate way to celebrate one of the world’s more successful multicultural communities is to grill a lamb chop.

Some might disagree but I think the debate around changing the date of Australia Day is a sign the idea of a national day of celebration and recognition might finally be coming something worthwhile.

If we’ve started to think about why we have an Australia Day, what it actually means to all come together and acknowledge what it is to be “Australian”, then we might be ready to celebrate something of real significance. And to do it on a date other than January 26.

The need to change the date seems obvious to me but I haven’t closed my ears to any of the arguments for keeping it. I just haven’t been swayed by any of them.

There are those who say changing the date is a divisive action and they somehow do so with a straight face in response to those who say they feel alienated by the current arrangement.

There are those who say celebrating the arrival of a leaky fleet full of syphilitic convicts and boozy British soldiers is acknowledgment of all the benefits of the English common law and Westminster parliamentary system that eventually grew from it.

That’s kind of valid, even though the date of Federation might be more easily tied to those ideals, but is a parliamentary system we share with Canada, Kuwait, Nepal, Tuvalu and 27 other countries really the thing defines us and gives us cause to come together in unified celebration?

Shouldn’t the fact we live in a place with its own unique laws, its own unique societal systems, its own living culture stretching back further than any other on the planet be something we celebrate as well?

Those who say changing to a more inclusive date won’t achieve a single practical solution to the many problems facing Aboriginal people don’t understand the power of significant symbolism to initiate change.

Then there’s the most puerile argument of all, the soulless and empty-headed fight against the all-purpose evil of political correctness that comes from the “You can’t tell me what to do” brigade.

Sure, some things falling under that umbrella are pointlessly political but others are just simply correct.

January 26 is significant but it’s not the Big Bang. It’s a point on a timeline that stretches back further and has gone in a multitude of directions since.

It might be your Australia Day but it never will be for many others. And there’s nothing to celebrate in that.