Akerman: We have a full basket of things to celebrate about January 26

Forget Invasion Day, Salvation Day or Enlightenment Day would be more accurate descriptions of the arrival of Western culture to Australia, writes Piers Akerman.

I don’t buy my politics or opinions at Woolworths, or Aldi for that matter.

Given that the bulk of the Australia Day products they are now refusing to sell would have been made in China, probably by forced or even slave labour, why would I trust these retailers to sell anything that might add value to the lives of Australians?

Yet the woke who continually bleat their concerns about some ethnic minorities, including all Aboriginal Australians, are prepared to endorse the anti-Australian virtue-signalling propaganda pushed by Woolworths and Aldi.

Woolworths has a lot of form in this area as it, like most of the major law firms, insurance companies, almost all universities and the bulk of the media organisations, are suckers for anything that smacks of feel-good wokeist nonsense, ranging from human-induced climate change to the failed Yes case in the now sunken Albanese referendum.

The issues that most Australians are concerned about are not those which the big grocers get their knickers knotted over.

Australia Day marks a lot more than the end of the long summer holiday for schoolchildren and many workers. Picture: Nev Madsen

Ask anyone searching for products in any aisle and they’ll tell you that the cost of living is their biggest worry and that this anxiety is not being addressed by the supermarkets, let alone the Federal Government, which is still to deliver on its $275 electricity price cut, among other election promises.

Australia Day marks a lot more than the end of the long summer holiday for schoolchildren and many workers.

Woolworths stores have withdrawn the sale of Australia Day merchandise – but smaller discount stores have plenty. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

For most Australians, it is a special day on which, in the company of family or friends – and particularly new immigrants – a collective thanks is given for the privilege of living in one of the oldest liberal democracies on earth and for the freedoms that are the legacy of the British settlement.

There’s little wonder that this island continent is a magnet for people from everywhere else.

The queues for Islamic, Buddhist or Hindu countries are non-existent.

Yet there exists a handful of activists who persist in viewing January 26 as a black day for those who, prior to 1788, were living a Palaeolithic tribal existence.

The fantasy that pre-European Aboriginal life was an idyllic pastorale relies on a most extraordinary and increasingly elaborate interpretation of history, including by the author Bruce Pascoe, who identifies as Aboriginal although studies of his genealogical record reveal no Aboriginal antecedents.

For his extremely creative work in providing an alternate history to the records of Aboriginal life from the time of first contact, Pascoe has been awarded a position at Melbourne University and numerous contracts for books and programs by the principal woke propagandist, the ABC.

Author Bruce Pascoe.

While Aboriginal inhabitants lived Stone Age lives, Pascoe and the revisionists now claim that they were the inventors of parliamentary democracy, as well as aeronautical and navigational arts.

Talking up these fantasies may make some who have self-marginalised themselves from the mainstream feel better about themselves, but they are inaccurate.

Australia Day, according to the woke, should really be called Invasion Day, but Salvation Day or Enlightenment Day would be more accurate descriptions of the arrival of Western culture on the continent named Australia by the great navigator and chart maker Matthew Flinders.

The year 2024, coincidentally, marks the 250th anniversary of Flinders’ birth, and will be celebrated by those who sail the seas around Australia and Tasmania, which Flinders and his friend, the British naval surgeon George Bass, first identified as an island.

Aboriginals weren’t versed in offshore navigation, as they had no seagoing craft capable of going more than a few hundred metres from a beach, unless it was in very sheltered waters.

This is not to dismiss the skills needed to exist as hunter-gatherers, and certainly not to ignore the extensive identification of native toxic plants that was developed during the thousands of years of pre-settlement existence.

But other claims made for them, including their care for the environment, are palpably false or at best debatable.

Pandering to activists like the ranting Senator Lidia Thorpe and her trade union allies, including Voice advocate Thomas Mayo, by ignoring the benefits of Western civilisation and traducing Australia Day is a slur on the millions who have made homes and lives for their families here, many with Aboriginals, since Captain Arthur Philip hoisted the Union flag at Farm Cove.

Roll on Australia Day, celebrate this great country, the opportunities it has provided and will continue to offer to those who seek a bright future and not a bleak one.