Tim Blair: Handy tips to beat the woke Australia Day pub ban near you
A pub and bar group has declared no-fun Sunday and Monday on the Australia Day long weekend, but Tim Blair has some handy tips to get around the fun police.
Opinion
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Some 200 pubs across Australia, including ten or so in Sydney, have decided there will be no celebrating of Australia Day within their walls next January.
Pub and bar group Australian Venue Co, who are evidently as boring as their name, yesterday made this sour announcement: “Australia Day is a day that causes sadness for some members of our community, so we have decided not to specifically celebrate a day that causes hurt for some of our patrons and our team.”
So January 26 and the subsequent public holiday on the 27th will be no-fun Sundays and Mondays at any Australian Venue Co, er, venues. Not for the first time, I’d guess, considering the current sorrowful management.
But this miserable bunch may have accidentally provided motivation for one of Australia’s greatest and funniest nationwide counter-strategies.
What if people simply turned up at these scowly woke joints and celebrated Australia Day anyway?
It wouldn’t need to be aggressive or confrontational. Maybe just wear an Australian flag design on your T-shirt, or a similar design on your fingernails. A patriotic hat could lend a jaunty touch to your overall attire.
Then just join the general crowd, if a crowd is in fact present. Invite conversation on the subject of Australian loveliness. Reel off a list of Australian innovations and discuss their beneficial impact on people everywhere.
If you’re at a posh place such as Kingsleys in Woolloomooloo, ask your server for the most Australian items on the menu: Sydney rock oysters, for example, or a ribeye steak from southern NSW.
Explain that your choices are part of a personal pro-Australian observance on our sacred national day.
By doing any or all of these wonderful things, you would obviously be celebrating Australia Day. It could be in ways big or small, overt or subtle.
The question then becomes: what are those anti-Australia Day venues going to do about it?
Will grandmothers be asked to leave a pub bistro because they decorated a lamington with little Australian flags? Could teetotallers be bodied out of bars for disorderly behaviour after humming the national anthem?
Could the former prison nation of Australia double its convict population overnight as thousands of Australia Day revellers are charged with happiness unbecoming?
Of course, there is always another tactic.
Just memorise all of those Australia Day-shunning pubs, and never visit any of them again for the rest of our lives.
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