It’s not really Australia Day anymore. It’s F*** You Day.
I ruined the last Australia Day BBQ I was invited to. It was some time ago. A suburban numptydad was foolish enough to express his naively-held opinion that calling it Invasion Day was a bit harsh… aaand we were off to the races. I was drinking my beers two-fisted by that point, and I remember having to put down at least one of them to do some instructional finger-jabbing.
“Maybe you’d feel differently if you were being forced to celebrate a successful Japanese invasion in 1942?” I said (or more likely slurred). “Swap out Governor fuckin’ Phillip for Admiral Yamamoto and the Rum Corps for the Imperial Japanese Army. You reckon that’d be worth a barbie? Mate?”
Yeah, I was that guy.
Still am, although I mostly keep it to myself these days. It feels like Australia Day has already had the dick. Translation for my handful of American readers: It’s fucked.
Yes, some polls—usually paid for by the Murdoch press—say there’s still a majority in favour of keeping January 26 as the national day. Some polls, which sample opinion beyond a couple of urinal cakes at the Daily Terror’s executive piss trough, don’t. But unifying concepts like national days need way more buy-in than 50% plus one. If the counter-demonstrations keep growing to your mardi gras of collective specialocity, it’s probably way past time to ask yourself why there were counter-demonstrations in the first place.
One answer: It’s not really Australia Day anymore. It’s become Fuck You Day.
A long time ago, in a Vegemiteland which was far, far away from us in enwokenment terms, it was possible for most people to think of January 26 as the last, lazy piss-up of the summer drinking season. If you asked them to explain the historical significance of the date, you’d get probably get some evasive mumbling about it being “Fkn Captain Cook’s first fleet or something, eh.”
That’s not a thing anymore.
Without hard data, we can’t know how quickly the tide is turning on the bogan origin story, but the anecdata feels like the sand running out between your toes as a wave recedes.
Because politics is so, er, political, it can be more informative to just follow the money. You could make your head go boing trying to unfold all the culture war origami of the new government’s reversal of a Morrison-era edict banning public servants from working on Australia Day, or you could just skim through a very incomplete list of heavy corporates that decided to let their employees choose whether to swap the 26th for another day off because, as Network 10 emailed its staff last year, January 26 was “not a day of celebration.” Sliding into the festering hotbed of militant socialism next to Ten this year were Kmart, Woolworths, Telstra, Woodside Energy, BHP, KPMG, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and Price Waterhouse Coopers.
Of course, Tony Abbott can hit out at woke CEOs because he’s got a lot of free time on his hands these days. But bosses are gonna boss, and the biggest of them have decided there’s no margin in a fuck you strategy.
That’s what leaning into January 26 is now. A deliberate fuck you to the survivors of the British invasion and colonisation, and beyond them to millions of people who feel a bit blergh at the idea of a massive piss-up to celebrate dispossession, injustice and attempted genocide.
It’s not gonna change next year or the year after that.
But the change is coming.
12yo: “What is Australia Day even for? What is it even celebrating?”
16yo: “Violence, theft and murder. Basically the invasion of Australia and the attempted wiping out of a whole race and culture.”
12yo: “Why would anyone want to celebrate that?”
16yo: “It’s so stupid and pointless.”
Are we even listening to our young people anymore? They won’t be continually fooled by “boomer” mentality. Get with the program. This date will change and so will how Australian History is taught in our schools. Our future is about truth, justice and empathy. I love my young people. 💚💛♥️🖤
Trundling my suitcase along Turton Street to Central Station in Brisbane's CBD yesterday I wondered why so few folk were pouring out of the station to head to work. Working from home? Not until on the Skytrain to the Airport did it dawn on me that it was January 26. As my wife drove the 50+ km from Newcastle's Airport to home - she suddenly gasped: "Well, there's an Australian!" A huge flag of the kind much beloved as a backdrop by politicians naked without appeals to blind patriotism was fluttering from the side of a 4WD tradie's vehicle. "Oh!" I replied. But it was the only one we saw. We lived once in a place called Anna Bay (part of Port Stephens). Two houses before ours had a huge flagpole and an always fluttering flag. They must be "real" Australians - we would muse - and they were - of some local pentecostal cult membership. Even during all my years in Japan I could not take seriously those who on official public holidays would prop a miniature national flag alongside their letterboxes. And of those I could identify - they were generally of the nationalist right - just like here. After the evening news we watched the concert from Sydney's Opera House forecourt - were there any singers who did not have First Australians ancestry - if so they were in the tiny minority or with deep connections to their First Australians buddies. Invasion Day sits very well with me - and I was upsetting members of my First Fleet family by employing exactly that term nearly 40 years ago. So bravo, John - and for your dextrous employment of English - flights of phrases to freedom from euphemism!