Not celebrating Australia Day shouldn’t mean discounting our good fortune

More so than any other cohort, Gen Z Australians are reluctant to commemorate Australia Day.

Recent polling suggests that the younger you are, the more likely you are to support changing the date of the holiday. According to the Resolve Political Monitor, only 35 per cent of Australians aged 18 to 34 support the January 26 placement. When I speak to my friends and peers, this finding rings true among most of them, for whom Australia Day is met with reticence at best.

The statue of Captain James Cook in Randwick has been vandalised for the second time in 12 months.Credit: Nick Moir

A significant portion of us realise that the date is justifiably difficult for some Australians, and in choosing not to celebrate (an easy thing to do) we show respect to people who feel that way. The 79 per cent of Australians aged over 55 who support keeping the date could take note.

This annual debate has made another point clear: while some of our elders could learn from my generation’s compassion, it’s clear that Gen Z-ers could learn from them, too. Namely, we could learn about pride.

Growing up, I have seen more than just a sensitivity and decency among my generation, more than just an estimable decision to refrain from commemorating a difficult date. What I have witnessed, not just on occasions like Australia Day but year-round, is a significant sense of shame in our country and a deep-rooted, tacit feeling of guilt. I have noticed a popular sentiment that the Australian story is not worth our admiration. For many young Australians, showing pride in our country is sometimes a nerve-racking thing to do.

While it is perfectly acceptable – important, even – to criticise your own country, the phenomenon occurring among many young people goes beyond anything constructive. It borders on a rejection of Australia and, generally speaking, an unwillingness to see that there is much to be proud of in our country.

The conservative Institute of Public Affairs, which routinely frets about this sort of thing, produced a 2024 study that found there is “a growing portion of young Australians who would rather flee their country than stay and fight if it was in a similar position as Ukraine”. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, 27 per cent would take up arms, apparently. For those over 65, that figure was 64 per cent.

This finding represents something that lies at the heart of so many young people’s attitudes towards Australia: we take life here for granted.

While our grandparents and, to a lesser extent, our parents grew up with tales of national crises barely averted – the threat of invasion during World War II, for example – such moments have receded from our collective memory. Meanwhile, the country has prospered through a lengthy peacetime, its newest generation emerging unfazed. As the vast majority of us young people have only ever known peace, we treat it as a given. The same goes for our cohesive multicultural society, our stable democratic systems and our social safety net.

Some would call this phenomenon ingratitude. I’m not so sure. But a central point remains: these features of life in Australia only persist through careful, conscious maintenance. By ignoring our blessings, we risk losing them.

From the conversations I hear among so many people my age – in university classes, among my friends and on social media – it’s clear that many of us are guilty of ignoring these blessings. The common verdict, it seems, is that we should be ashamed of our nation – that Australia is a country barely worth living in.

That’s why, as Australia Day nears and the inevitable debate bubbles over at family gatherings, the nation’s younger citizens would do well to pull up a chair next to their older relatives. We could learn the importance of pride and reflection on what’s great about our country (this doesn’t mean overlooking the unacceptable aspects of the past, by the way), while many of our elders could follow our example of sensitivity.

Because choosing not to celebrate Australia Day should not mean discounting the good fortune we have to live here.

Speaking in 1992 about the Anzac legend, then-prime-minister Paul Keating articulated the principle that lies at the heart of this issue today. “Legends bind nations together,” he said. “They define us to ourselves. But they should not stifle us. They should not constrain our growth, or restrict us when we have to change.”

Daniel Cash is a law student at Australian National University.

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