Steve Price: Why do we let loud minority groups trample all over our national day?
Out-of-touch corporate giants, sporting bodies, state governments, and local councils naively see rejecting Australia Day as supporting the trampled rights of Indigenous Australians. In reality, it’s useless virtue signalling.
Opinion
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Hate Australia Day came early this year with one of the worst PR disasters in modern history.
Hong Kong-owned hotel outfit Australian Venue Co, owners of 200 pubs around the country, decided it would be a good idea to cancel celebrations in all their venues on January 26 – our national day.
The online backlash blew up the Herald Sun website. Talkback radio exploded and I lost my cool on The Project on Monday night.
My on-air colleague Hamish McDonald labelled me an “alarm clock” making the point that at this time every year we have the same argument.
Last year it was grocery chain Woolworths who shot themselves in the foot refusing to sell Australia Day merchandise, and soon after CEO Brad Banducci walked.
These corporate giants just never seem to learn.
Australians might not be as overtly patriotic as our American friends, but the quiet majority showed in our defiant rejection of the nation-dividing Voice referendum that we are proud of Australia as it is.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his inner-city cohort of leftie lecture merchants should be very afraid of what is coming for them if they keep up this three flag, treaty divisive narrative that non-Indigenous Australians should be ashamed of the past and apologise for everything. Suburban Australia doesn’t feel that way, and being lectured to by university educated greenie elites is starting to get on all our nerves.
That’s why in the space of a few hours the ordinary Australians who spend their hard-earned money in that hotel outfit’s pubs told them ... see you later. One can only imagine what the wet behind the ears, degree-holding marketing guru who came up with this woke virtue-signalling idea about banning Australia Day was doing by Monday lunchtime.
Hiding under their work from home desk in active wear, I suspect.
Incredible to think that the senior management of this outfit who let their hotels observe everything from St Patricks Day to AFLW Pride round were not smart enough to avoid a PR disaster in the making. You also wonder what would happen to the Hong Kong-based owners of this company if their Asian based entertainment businesses ignored October 1, the National Day of the People’s Republic of China celebrating Mao’s achievements in 1949.
I suspect they’d be doing time in a Chinese jail cell.
Australians – all of us – need to ask why we let all these loud minority groups trample all over our national day. I suspect – and this hatred of January 26 hasn’t always been with us – it is all part of the indigenous treaty movement as they indoctrinate the young and bluff many in the media to toe their line that we should be ashamed of something that happened in 1788.
Treaty, especially in Victoria, is an industry run by city dwelling activists like Lidia Thorpe and her like that is doing nothing for Aboriginal people living in remote Australia subject to the national shame of domestic violence, child abuse and drug and alcohol addiction.
Levels of crime outstrip anything we see in North Fitzroy or Collingwood, but our state government is obsessed with signing a truth telling treaty with these urban agitators and activists.
Will that treaty help one little kid in Alice Springs watching his drunken father bashing his mother to death? Will it keep that same youngster from getting addicted to meth? NO.
Disturbingly our Premier Jacinta Allan, when asked recently about what the Treaty negotiations under way right now in secrecy will mean for Victoria, replied: “I’m today not ruling anything in or out.” Really. Ruling nothing out.
That should frighten every Victorian and really frighten all of Australia! If it happens here it will spread like wildfire especially among the Labor States. South Australia I believe is already ahead of Victoria with treaty negotiations.
If you really want to be frightened log on to the “Treaty for Victoria” website and have a quick read. We are told the key decisions about Aboriginal community, culture and lands should be made by Aboriginal people. Pause and remember Australians – 60 per cent of us – rejected this idea of a divided Australia at the Voice referendum. And isn’t this exactly that?
The same website tells us we must acknowledge the enduring impact of colonialism and restore the inherent rights of first peoples and accept what was done to (us).
You can see where this is going, all glad-handed by a socialist left Labor government that sees the writing on the wall after 10 years in power. Watch very closely how this process that has been under way now for eight years and was accelerated by the Treaty Act of 2022 suddenly speeds up. We have something called the Yoorook Justice Commission and separate Koori courts.
Talk about division. Yoorook describes itself as the first formal truth-telling process into historical and (importantly) ongoing injustices experienced by First Peoples in Victoria. Taxpayer funded of course.
They delivered an interim report in 2022 then a critical issues report in 2023 and a final report to come in 2025. Jobs for the Indigenous industry paid for by you and me, so why wouldn’t you stretch it out.
Is it any wonder out-of-touch corporate giants like Woolworths, Australian Venue Co and sporting bodies like the AFL, state governments, local councils and Green activists turn their noses up at celebrating Australia Day. Naively they see this as supporting the trampled rights of the current generation of Indigenous Australians when in reality it is useless virtue signalling.
Sadly, we have come too far down this road to go back but those Australians who blew up the internet over this hotel group’s anti-Australia Day announcement would love to see this country united under one flag, not three, happily celebrating the great things about our country and not whinging about events no modern Australian had anything to do with.
Happy Australia Day.
Likes
• Poll showing 59 percent of Australians support King Charles
• Business Council of Australia survey telling the truth about Victoria’s economy – worst place to do business in Australia
• Second Aussie on the F1 grid for last race of the year- Jack Doohan son of legendary racer Mick
• Glowing tributes for the tennis champ Neale Fraser who passed this week
Dislikes
• Commonwealth bank introducing a three-dollar fee for withdrawing your own money
• State government cutting back funding for the CFA just as we head into summer
•The AFLW grand final with the losing side Brisbane only managing one goal
• A three-day Bollywood themed carnival around the MCG Boxing day Test – isn’t it our home event
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