Australia Day: ABC pressured to remove ‘Invasion Day’ references

The ABC removed references to Australia Day as ‘Invasion Day’ from a story posted at the weekend after Paul Fletcher criticised the public broadcaster.

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher. Picture: Gary Ramage

The ABC has removed references to Australia Day as “Invasion Day” from a story posted at the weekend after Communications Minister Paul Fletcher criticised the public broadcaster for suggesting the two were interchangeable.

Mr Fletcher’s intervention is the second time the government and the broadcaster have been at odds in recent months after a stoush over a Four Corners episode focusing on Attorney-General Christian Porter in November.

The ABC’s guide to events on January 26 — originally titled “Australia Day/Invasion Day 2021 events for Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Hobart and Darwin” — was altered on Monday.

It is now headlined “Australia Day is a contentious day for many. Here are the events being held on January 26”. Other references to Invasion Day were also removed, including a second paragraph that originally read: “January 26 marks Australia Day or Invasion Day.”

The controversial use of the term “Invasion Day” by the public broadcaster comes amid a debate about whether January 26, the day the First Fleet arrived in 1788, should remain Australia Day because of the impacts of European arrival on Indigenous Australians.

Protesters are expected to gather in major cities on Tuesday to attend annual Invasion Day rallies, despite public health orders limiting the size of outdoor gatherings. NSW Police Minister David Elliott, who also criticised the ABC’s use of “Invasion Day”, appealed to protesters not to gather in large numbers.

The ABC, in a statement on Sunday, defended the publication and said its default terminology remained Australia Day.

It recognised and respected “that community members use other terms for the event, including ‘26 January’. ‘Invasion Day’ and ‘Survival Day’ … so our reporting and coverage reflect that”, the statement reads.

“Given the variety of terms in use, and the different perspectives on the day that the ABC is going to cover over the course of the long weekend, it would be inappropriate to mandate staff use any one term over others in all contexts.”

On Monday, an ABC spokeswoman said other terms for the event were not interchangeable with Australia Day.

“We have changed a headline to reflect this,” she said.

“The minister is aware of the ABC correction and welcomes it as a sensible outcome,” a spokesman for Mr Fletcher said.

Earlier, Mr Fletcher had asked for a correction. “While the ABC has editorial independence, and I do not control what it says, I call on the ABC to correct this inaccurate article,” he said.

“For the ABC to suggest otherwise — that in some way Invasion Day is interchangeable with Australia Day — is clearly wrong. The name of Australia Day is reflected in legislation across Australia. More important, it is reflected in the usage of the overwhelming majority of Australians.”

Others, however, backed the ABC’s decision to use the term “Invasion Day”.

Linda Burney, Labor’s Indigenous Australians spokeswoman, said it was clear “more and more Australians are coming to understand, as the ABC has demonstrated, that there are different views about this day”.