Thousands gather for Australia Day celebrations and citizenship ceremonies
Thousands have flocked to Australia Day events across the nation to commemorate the greatest nation in the world, with new citizens from over 150 different countries pledging their patriotism to Australia.
Thousands have flocked to citizenship ceremonies across the country to pledge their commitment to Australia, as Anthony Albanese slammed Peter Dutton for snubbing the national Australia Day ceremony in Canberra.
The Prime Minister on Sunday morning attended the National Citizenship and Flag Raising Ceremony at Lake Burley Griffin, one of almost 400 events held across the country welcoming more than 20,000 new citizens.
Mr Albanese said he was “disappointed” after the Opposition Leader opted out of the national ceremony in Canberra, and instead spent the day in his home state of Queensland.
“I think the national Australia Day event should be attended by both sides of the parliament,” he said.
Mr Dutton has long criticised the Albanese government for not showing the national day enough respect and called for federal mandates forcing local councils to hold Australia Day citizenship ceremonies and other events on January 26.
New citizens from over 150 different countries pledged their patriotism to Australia, including Ash Phatak and his eight-year-old twin daughters Sharveyi and Anwesha who made it their first mission – after being sworn in as citizens – to go to the beach on Australia Day.
The software engineer said he was looking forward to contributing to Australian society after a challenging journey to citizenship – and getting the rest of his family to Australia – after arriving in 2020, just before Covid-19 travel bans were put in place.
“It feels great to become an Australian citizen. It is like an official recognition to all the hard work that we have done,” said Mr Phatak, who works for an Australian-owned-and-operated fintech company.
“It’s going to be a new chapter in my life, and I’m looking forward to contributing to the Australian society in a more progressive way, bringing a lot of rich Indian culture and heritage to make the society more diverse, more vibrant, more colourful.
“The plan was to get my family here in Australia within a couple of months, but because of the travel ban and all the circumstances, it turned out to be 11 months, so that was a big challenge.”
At dawn in Sydney, locals arrived to the harbour foreshore to watch as the Opera House was projected with ‘The Dawn Reflection’, the work of Wiradjuri-Biripi artist James P. Simon whose piece “River Life” explores the profound connection between Aboriginal people and water.
The artwork is intended to reflect “the deep spiritual and cultural significance of waterways to Indigenous communities, emphasising how water is not merely a resource but a living entity that provides food, medicine, kinship, and healing while connecting people to their ancestors and traditions”.
Organisers said the dawn ceremony, which is known as “Barabiyanga” in the Eora language – the dialect of coastal Aboriginal clans around Sydney – served as a moment for all Australians to reflect on unity, inclusion, and shared commitment to the country’s future, while acknowledging the continuing cultural heritage of First Nations peoples.
At a Sunday mass in Albury, Sussan Ley, federal member for Farrer, compared the arrival of the First Fleet to Elon Musk’s SpaceX program seeking to reach Mars.
The deputy leader of the opposition said the First Fleet’s arrival to Australia was like a “new experiment and a new society”.
“In what could be compared to Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s efforts to build a new colony on Mars, men in boats arrived on the edge of the known world to embark on that new experiment,” Ms Ley said.
“A new experiment and a new society. And just like astronauts arriving on Mars those first settlers would be confronted with a different and strange world, full of danger, adventure and potential,” she said.
From Canberra, Mr Albanese travelled to Sydney to attend the Australia Day Live evening concert at the Sydney Opera House.
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