The hullabaloo around “Australia Day” started early this year. It was barely the beginning of December 2024 when outrage columns and Sky News Australia video clips were raging about a chain of pubs apparently “banning” Australia Day celebrations. Never mind that these establishments did nothing of the sort. They simply stated that they were not going to be holding Australia Day events themselves – there was never any indication they intended on turning away flag-wearing fools from sinking a lager.
What followed was predictable. Woolworths said it would be reinstating flag merchandise to distract us all from the fact that, along with Coles, they are currently under fire for price gouging during a cost-of-living crisis. Alternative prime minister Peter Dutton has seized the opportunity to build popularity in an election year by making statements that hark back to the good old days of John Howard’s nationalistic culture wars. Federal Labor has been, well, hopeless. Their only real vision for Indigenous rights appears to have been their failed voice referendum, and when it boils down to it, Labor just wish to retain power while polls show they are losing popularity rather than inspiring an electorate with any real vision. Then there was the conservative thinktank the Institute of Public Affairs releasing their polling results that stated folks did not want to change the date of Australia Day, never mind that this is not why people march on 26 January.
Here in Victoria, the state Labor government has not done much better. Granted, some incredible vision has come out of the First Peoples’ Assembly (which is negotiating a treaty with the state government) and the Yoorrook Justice Commission, but the premier, Jacinta Allan, has also moved to squash democracy by instituting anti-protest laws that her predecessor, Dan Andrews – a man who adored increasing policing powers – would be proud of. In doing so, Allan criticised those standing against the genocide of Palestinians by pretending it’s some far away problem our own country has not continuously assisted in facilitating. Her new laws also send a message to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander protesters, and any other groups that participate in demonstrations, along the lines of: “We need to keep these noisy minorities off the streets. Their problems are inconvenient.”
The Australia Day conversation is boring. The arguments have been made time and time again, including by myself, on an annual basis. Yet as another year rolls around, we are hit with this predictable pattern. I am always going to prefer that I lived in a more educated, open-hearted and accepting society where the arguments I, and other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, make are rendered null and void by progress. To be honest, I don’t see that happening soon. Politicians are still able to save their careers in this country by appealing to discriminatory attitudes because, deep down, the nation’s psyche remains very hardwired to the primacy of white Australia. Perhaps instead, it’s time the public got used to the idea that the history of protest on this day is going nowhere, and indeed, predates the day being a public holiday by five and a half decades.
As an Arrernte woman, I can remember a time before 26 January became a national public holiday, but I cannot remember a time when this date has not been a day for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander protest. I was born in Canberra, and mere years before, 26 January was used to establish the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the Old Parliament House lawns in 1972. In 1992, it was also the day Indigenous activists decided to occupy the Old Parliament House in a tent embassy re-enactment protest.
Way back in 1938, the first Day of Mourning protest was held in Sydney, during which Aboriginal people in funereal garb walked to Australian Hall, and passed a resolution calling for recognition and equality, among other things. In the bicentenary year, 26 January saw a massive convergence of Indigenous activists in Sydney, where they marched to protest against the celebration of colonisation and devastation, as well as highlight the land rights movement.
In the late 1990s, after Australia Day had been instituted as a federal public holiday in 1994, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people would get together and hold “Survival Day” events. Protest has always featured, and in the past decade and a half, it has become more robust, but the reality is that this protest has an incredible history, going back a long time. In taking to the streets, we honour those who kept the fires of resistance burning before us.
This is why every time I hear conservative and/or reactionary white people crying out that Aboriginal people are trying to ruin this country and “change the date”, I wonder where they have been. For what it’s worth, “change the date” has little to nothing to do with why we march on 26 January. Indeed, the fact that much of the Day of Mourning’s resolution remains relevant and unfulfilled, nearly 90 years down the track, is more indicative of the driving reason. Australia could change the date of its national holiday and I would still feel compelled to march with my community on 26 January because for us, as well as marking the beginning of invasion, this date also marks an incredible history of resistance. Perhaps it’s time Australia accepted that protests on this day are part of the “national character”, and they have much to learn by joining in.
Protests may stop when truth-telling and treaties are done. When reparations are made and when there is no longer a need to highlight the struggle. Until then, we will continue walking for justice in the footsteps of the brave ancestors who walked before us.
• Celeste Liddle is an Arrernte woman living in Melbourne. She is a freelance writer, social commentator and activist. Liddle was a Greens candidate for the seat of Cooper in the 2022 federal election. She left the party in February 2023
This article was amended on 24 January 2025. A previous version referred to the Treaty Authority instead of the First Peoples’ Assembly.
