Rita Panahi: Changing Australia Day won’t satisfy activists

The assault against our national day has little to do with the date and everything to do with delegitimising modern Australia.

The notion that changing the date will cease the attacks on Australia Day is at best naive.

The assault against our national day has little to do with the date and everything to do with delegitimising modern Australia.

Changing Australia Day from January 26 will only embolden the activists, not satisfy them.

It will do little to change the ill-feeling of the malignant Left nor their determination to falsely paint this country as one that is rooted in racism and genocide.

The view that this “always was and always will be” Aboriginal land is deeply xenophobic.

It denotes that those who do not have the right ancestry are unwelcome interlopers and not entitled to think of this land as their own.

As I wrote some years ago it’s a politically correct way of saying “go back to where you came from”.

Little wonder then that so many migrants find the attacks against Australia Day particularly egregious with polls showing an overwhelming majority of migrants feel positively towards Australia Day.

Changing Australia Day from January 26 will only embolden the activists, not satisfy them Picture: Getty Images

Sadly, among young people the anti-Australia Day propaganda, led by media, academia, celebrities and increasingly corporates, is having a real impact.

Of course this campaign doesn’t operate in isolation but together with a plethora of messaging rooted in grievance, victimhood and race obsessions.

As it stands, a significant majority of Australians, around two in three, support Australia Day remaining on January 26, according to a number of polls including by Roy Morgan, CoreData and Deakin University.

But that majority view is not reflected in the media coverage nor campaigns run by corporates from The ABC to Telstra to the Australian Open.

The media’s fatwa against the national holiday was underway even when polls showed that over 90 per cent of Australians supported the national holiday and less than one in three Indigenous people felt negatively towards the day.

A poll commissioned by far Left publication The Guardian in 2017 revealed that only six per cent of Australians felt negatively towards Australia Day and only 15 per cent favoured changing it from January 26.

Many Australians are happy with the date of Australia Day. Picture: David Crosling

Among migrants the number was even lower.

Nowadays some self-loathing white folks, including inner-city dwelling CEOs and ABC hosts, can’t even bring themselves to say Australia Day – they simply say January 26.

How long before they join Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe in the “pay the rent” campaign requiring Australians to pay weekly rent to Indigenous people for “using their land”?

If you think the two issues are not connected, you are not paying attention.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the loud minority would stop stoking racial divisions and instead, on this Australia Day, reflect on just how blessed we all are to be living in this corner of the world in a country that is peaceful, prosperous and where anyone regardless of class, colour or creed can achieve amazing things.

What makes a great Australian isn’t their ancestry but their contribution to the country.

But those values are under threat; the silent majority better find its voice and soon.