Joe Hildebrand: Double celebrations would embrace Indigenous and multicultural Australia

A simple solution would see and end to the miserablism tearing us apart and old mates coming together for Australia Day. And what a day it will be when that comes, writes Joe Hildebrand.

And so upon us once more is Australia Day – the day that tears Australia apart.

Or so its opponents would have us believe: It’s divisive, outdated, racist, literally Hitler … you know the drill.

Thus over recent years people have got angrier and angrier about it; more and more outrage, more and more protests, more and more hashtags.

Not even the Triple J Hottest 100 was safe on January 26. Suddenly the ABC youth station was an agent of white supremacy. Australia Day was, even some supporters admitted, inevitably doomed.

Except it wasn’t.

Polling has consistently found that the overwhelming majority of Australians want to keep the national day on January 26, yet the assumption among many progressives was that this would inevitably decline.

Except it didn’t.

Nippers Sophia Lipman, 11, Amelie Gurkhi, 8, Charlie Lipman, 11, Edwards Gunoz, 9, Alex Chua, 8, and Kian Foo, 9, proved Australia Day is something worth celebrating. Picture Jeff Darmanin

A poll of more than 1000 people commissioned by the Institute of Public Affairs and conducted by independent pollster Dynata found that support for Australia Day actually grew – nay, skyrocketed – over the past year, from 63 to 69 per cent. By contrast a mere 14 per cent disagreed, with 18 per cent ambivalent (figures rounded).

Ah yes, the assumption continues, but it is still inevitable because young people are increasingly opposed to Australia Day.

Except they’re not.

Support for Australia Day among 18-24 year olds – the weakest cohort – rose a whopping 10 points to 52 per cent, the biggest increase out of anyone aged under 65.

This suggests one in five young people have changed their mind on the matter in just 12 months.

As the youth of my generation would say, WTF?

In fact the high level of support for Australia Day has consistently been there, in polls commissioned and conducted by everyone from the ANU to Deakin Uni and Ipsos and Roy Morgan. Progressive outlets have often spun such results as nonetheless representing a decline, especially among the young. The latest poll reverses that.

So again, WTF happened?

US President Donald Trump’s election victory was a repudiation of so-called “woke” politics. Picture: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

For one, Donald Trump happened. The Dynata poll was conducted a month after his resounding victory, a phenomenon that was a repudiation of so-called “woke” politics.

This, the culmination of countless other national backlashes across the Western world, proved once and for all that woke ideology was far from inevitable. Indeed, for the vast majority, it was deeply undesirable.

And there is no greater epitome in the vague swamp of wokeism than the crusade against a public holiday in the cause of racial justice.

There is no doubt that in Australia Indigenous disadvantage is real and that colonisation has been brutal to Aboriginal people, often by accident and ignorance, sometimes by cruelty and design. The impacts of this history today are physical and practical. Indigenous Australians have vastly poorer employment, education and health outcomes than non-Indigenous, as well as a life-expectancy a decade lower than the rest of us.

This is literally a matter of life and death and if changing a date on the calendar would change any of that, I’d be marching in the streets myself.

Pro-Palestinian activists, by declaring they will continue to march despite a ceasefire going into effect in Gaza, prove it is not outcomes these people want, it’s outrage. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

But of course it won’t. Like so many so-called “woke” obsessions of both the far-left and far-right it will have absolutely zero impact on people’s day-to-day lives, let alone save them.

It is much like the supposedly pro-Palestinian activists who have marched in the streets every week across the country demanding a ceasefire. And now a ceasefire has been reached, they declare they’re going to keep marching anyway.

It is not outcomes these people want, it’s outrage. They are the same types who swarmed to tear down statues of people they had once never heard of, as if that would make an iota of difference to history, let alone the present.

In fact if electoral results are anything to go by, it has merely galvanised most of those in the present in favour of dark histories of which they too were previously unaware. It’s an absurd simplicity that manifests into embarrassing idiocy.

The obvious solution is to stop tearing down old statues and stories and instead create new ones. Stop erasing one side of the past and instead elevate others alongside it.

The arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 was the most seismic day for Australia in 60,000 years of human habitation. Picture: National Library of Australia

So too with Australia Day. January 26, 1788, was the most seismic day for Australia in 60,000 years of human habitation. To erase it does as much disservice to First Australians as it does the First Fleet.

The solution is simple: Double the Day. Make January 25 a day of celebration of the oldest continuing culture on Earth, and keep January 26 as a day of celebration of Australia’s multicultural rebirth.

It is an idea conceived by the most sensible Indigenous statesman Noel Pearson and one that is increasingly gaining traction in the sensible centre. Because that’s what we want. Not the new miserablism tearing us apart but old mates coming together.

That is Australia. And what a day it will be when that day comes.

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Originally published as Joe Hildebrand: Double celebrations would embrace Indigenous and multicultural Australia