Vikki Campion: Let’s celebrate what’s good about Australia on our national day
If France can celebrate Bastille Day, and the US goes wild for the Fourth of July, why can’t Australians grow up and celebrate our national day, asks Vikki Campion.
Opinion
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Don’t spit in the face of Australia Day for past wrongs while fawning over Bastille Day.
The national days mark events occurring in nearly the exact same period in history, but are a hemisphere apart — and also light years apart in the actions of presiding leaders.
During the French Revolution, frenzied, drugged and drunken mobs destroyed literary treasures and medieval paintings, and executed the educated, targeting scientists and priests. State-sanctioned violence, public executions and mass killings of thousands of those suspected of being disloyal to the radical cause followed in the years after the storming of the Bastille in 1789. It was the “Reign of Terror”.
In 1788 Australia, governor Arthur Phillip was trying to stop a miserable penal colony from starving to death, doing all in his power to be respectful to the Aboriginal people he met and tried to trade with. He was the governor of a penal settlement, not the general of an army.
Yet the same councillors and members of parliament who choke on the words “Australia Day”, renaming it “Invasion Day”, or only supporting it with caveats, seem happy to gush over the celebration of Bastille Day, often with taxpayer assistance.
The world has moved on, and what Bastille Day now represents is entirely different to the horrific violence that occurred.
But that maturity is lacking in so many Australian politicians who are hung up on seeing a 1788 colony with 2024 iPad eyes.
Leading the gushing are councils who canned their citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day, including Sydney, Woollahra, North Sydney and Newcastle, and our current Minister for Citizenship Andrew Giles.
Mr Giles started writing his chapter in the book of chicanery by dissembling the Australian Citizenship Ceremonies Code to allow councils to remove citizenship ceremonies from Australia Day surreptitiously, and with it many of the associated celebrations, from barbecues and lamingtons to fireworks.
However, on Bastille Day he has in the past been all baguettes and champagne, gushing on social media “Happy Bastille Day” as if the French Revolution was a benevolent expose of a new philosophy.
Warringah MP Zali Steggall, who famously asked Mosman Council to hold a moment of silence to mourn on Australia Day, also fawns “Happy Bastille Day for tomorrow!”.
She must have either been on the slopes when that history lesson was on or now has the maturity to realise that what it represents today differs from what happened then.
Yet she puts a lot of caveats on her support of Australia Day, which never seem to apply to Bastille Day.
Sydney City Council, recently listed as a sponsor and partner by the Bastille Festival, sends its councillors to Bastille soirees and promotes Bastille Day events on ratepayer-funded socials and websites, while refusing to conduct citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day.
Why don’t they insist on a minute of silence for all of those murdered, raped and tortured in the bloodbath that was the French Revolution?
Let’s again (as I wrote last year) dispense with the idea governor Phillip came as an invasion force; he was the administrator of a fleet of jail ships of a penal settlement which nearly starved to death.
After Mother Britain waved goodbye, he was promptly forgotten about. Far from wanting a military campaign in Australia, Britain had its books full with the recent loss to George Washington in the American Revolutionary War and then another problem by the name of Napoleon.
In the US, the Fourth of July is a celebration of a profoundly violent revolutionary war. The National Day of Spain celebrates the discovery of the New World, which didn’t end well for the original civilisations of South and Central America. Yet no one is tearing down the statues of Christopher Columbus in Spain, no US presidential candidate is speaking ill of the Fourth of July, and French families don’t mourn for a minute during their Bastille celebrations.
China’s national day is when Chairman Mao came to power, and his policies became responsible for the deaths of tens of millions — yet the Australia Chinese Business Council holds dinners with politicians to celebrate it here in Australia.
A ginger group always feasts on destroying icons, but the end game is to replace them with their own.
The question in Australia is: Who do they want you to stand in sombre recognition of?
Woollahra Council, on Sydney’s harbour, easily one of the greatest beneficiaries of European settlement, is the latest council to cancel Australia Day citizenship ceremonies.
They are mourning the lost referendum, despite showing their splendid passion on garbage truck decals to support The Voice. Woollahra Council’s priority is to rage against democracy, officially moving a motion to thank the Australians who voted yes.
Darebin Council in Victoria, advises ratepayers to “Read an Acknowledgement of Country statement to family, friends or loved ones during a quiet moment or before a meal on January 26”.
It’s busily renaming its public libraries, swimming pools, and pavilions to “tell the stories of our Aboriginal and migrant history, Darebin leaders, significant women, and people in the disability and LGBTQIA+ communities”.
While it refuses to celebrate Australia Day, incredulously, the opening hours published online appear to show they are still taking the day off.
If you are so ashamed of our nation that you lower a flag, please raise the flag of the one you would rather live in, with the pure unblemished past.
Are you embarrassed by our free health care, free schools, subsidised childcare, a police force that we don’t have to bribe, an egalitarian nation where families who don’t come from Woollahra or Darebin or like suburbs can make it?
Are you concerned that we have never had a civil war or revolution?
Are you embarrassed by the refugees we take in who proudly become citizens on Australia Day, who pledge their allegiance to the flag? The community groups and individuals who are recognised for going beyond what is expected of a citizen? Is your chip on your shoulder more important than their day?
Our nation came from the seedbed of a penal colony and the Aboriginal people.
If the French can put aside the horror of the French Revolution to celebrate Bastille Day, and if the Americans can pluck out the good parts of the Fourth of July, and China can celebrate their day, then we must grow up — as our nation has — and celebrate it for what it is now.
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