James Campbell: Controversy over Australia Day catches Labor between the Greens and the Coalition
LABOR seems uncertain on Australia Day — a tricky position when Greens and Coalition voters know where their parties stand, writes James Campbell.
James Campbell
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YOU HAVE to give it to the canny folk at Meat and Livestock Australia. Having spent years training us to be believe it was our patriotic duty to eat lamb on January 26, they spotted that the controversy over this particular holiday wasn’t going to go away.
PUSH FOR AUSTRALIA DAY CHANGES FROM GREEN MPS
JEFF KENNETT: PROTECT THIS DAY FOR ALL AUSTRALIANS
AUSTRALIA’S NATIONAL DAY HAS ONLY BEEN CELEBRATED ON JANUARY 26 SINCE 1994
Sniffing the wind a couple of years ago, the ads promoting what they now coyly call their Summer Lamb campaign were shorn of all references to Australia Day.
This year’s effort, which features dancing teams of Left and Right-wing commentators eventually brought together by their shared love of a cutlet, strikes me as a clever acknowledgment that this row has now become one of those permanent schisms in our national life, like the republican “debate” that also isn’t going away.
This is an odd development for those of us old enough to remember how the world was before the Bicentenary in 1988. Before then nobody paid much attention to Australia Day — it certainly wasn’t treated as a sacred day that had to be celebrated on January 26; it was just a public holiday that fell on the last weekend of January.
I don’t recall it inspiring passionate feeling one way or another. If you’d asked people about it I think people would have said they were grateful for the day off but could only regard with mixed feelings a holiday that celebrates the foundation of Sydney.
Nowadays of course it’s a big deal: addresses by the governor-general and PM, fireworks, citizenship ceremonies and barbecues, to which, until this year, the ABC provided a soundtrack with its Triple J Hottest 100. Of course, as the mainstream’s passion for this holiday has grown so have the protests against what its enemies call Invasion or Survival Day. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised, given the whole point of life for a certain type of Left-winger is to be opposed to things the majority of the country likes.
Anyone could see that from the moment the ABC decided to side with them by sacking the Hottest 100 from January 26, it would be game on. This week the Greens leader Richard Di Natale upped the ante saying the day represented dispossession, theft, and the “ongoing genocide” and “slaughter” of Aboriginal people.
If he really thinks that the Australia is engaged in “ongoing genocide” against the indigenous people of this continent, surely we shouldn’t be celebrating it on any of the other 364 days of the year either. I suspect Di Natale doesn’t really believe that. This is just a bit of virtue signalling to his people.
From the Greens point of view, this issue is a beautiful thing — even better than boat people, it’s another great attack line on the ALP. In their heart of hearts, all but the dumbest Greens voters know that, as cruel as it is, the alternative to offshore processing of asylum seekers would be thousands of deaths at sea and the eventual destruction of Australia’s legal immigration program.
Calling for Australia Day to be moved is, in contrast, consequence free. Di Natale et al also know that a large number of Labor folk, both members and voters, agree with their position. Earlier this week, the ALP’s employment and workplace relations spokesman Brendan O’Connor was asked if there was a debate in the ALP about the date.
“We are always looking to reconcile the view of the nation, the sense of history,” he answered. “I think, for example, we’ve closed our minds to a lot of things that happened in the past that we may now re-examine … I think when I was growing up and going to school we didn’t learn enough about indigenous culture, indigenous history, to the point where I didn’t fully understand as a young boy the sophistication and the real remarkable story, which is our First Australians’ story and I think that’s a shame.”
Hardly a ringing endorsement of the status quo. Similarly Linda Burney, the party’s human services spokeswoman and the first indigenous woman elected to the House of Representatives, said that she didn’t see the date changing in the short term “but the date needs to be a day of reflection, as I said, and deep understanding of the truth of human history, which is a pretty fabulous one for all to celebrate in Australia”.
This is Australia. Deep reflection isn’t really our thing. The “debate” over Australia Day is, I suspect, only going to get shriller. Burney’s proposal that we keep January 26, but add an extra holiday to make it up to those who don’t like it, isn’t going to wash.
Unlike the Labor Party, the Liberal and National Parties are united on this issue. They love Australia and will be reminding us of that love at every opportunity they get. And they know that the vast majority of Bill Shorten’s blue-collar base is with them on this one.
It’s a cost-free exercise for them, just as it is for the Greens, with the added bonus that it takes them back to the good old days of the Howard era when talk of the “black-armband” view of Australia history first sold tickets.
They also suspect that Shorten’s heart isn’t in a full-throated defence of Australia Day and the public will see that.
James Campbell is national politics editor
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