82 years ago, Labor Prime Minister John Curtin broadcast an Australia Day address across the nation and over a network of US radio stations as well as the BBC. Curtin said: “Australia is the oldest continent with the youngest civilization in the world. It is a land under the grim shadow of war. This Australia is the bulwark of civilization south of the Equator. It is the rampart of freedom against barbarism … Today is our national day. The purity of our purpose, the idealism of our struggle … give to our cause not only the momentum to victory, but we feel confident, an irresistible attraction for free people everywhere.”
This is Curtin oratory at its finest and most patriotic. Today, his talk of “youngest civilization” would not pass muster in a prime ministerial speech. When we speak of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditions, we are not only referring to the survival, knowledge and wisdom of our First Nations’ peoples, but a recognition that this is the oldest continent on earth and home to the oldest continuing culture, call it a ‘civilization’.
Which brings us to the Groundhog Day rancour surrounding the date of our national day, one this year subject to Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s culture war sortie promising to reinstate mandatory citizenship ceremonies on local councils. Likewise the Institute of Public Affairs publicised polling showing what it describes as a “vibe shift” for keeping January 26 pushing back against corporate activism and “woke elites” with 69 per cent of Australians supporting the celebration on the 26th. The IPA touts its report’s finding that 52 per cent of Australians aged 18-24 back the status quo, up from 42 per cent last year. If anything, these small majority numbers should alarm the IPA and fellow travellers. They contradict the findings of its 2024 survey that found 87 per cent of us are proud to be Australian. Is the scourge of corporate-elite wokeness – personally I find it odious – shifting ordinary Australians’ views, or is it their revitalising patriotism? It appears that Aussies know that our country is not perfect but are proud patriots, with an open mind about Australia Day’s celebration.
I do not propose to rehash the arguments for and against, suffice to say that if a plebiscite was held on the issue today it would be badly defeated. Its defeat would shadow the results of the 1999 republican referendum and 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum. The inner cities would vote in favour, generally speaking, but the further one travelled into suburban and regional Australia the stronger the depth of opposition, hence an overall defeat.
As both results demonstrated, this is not simply the view of what is often sneeringly referred to as old ‘Anglo’ Australia. Migrants to this country, new and old, and majorities of non-Anglos, voted No. It didn’t matter what Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins, celebrities or corporate Yes advocates thought. The same goes for leading anti-Voice campaigner Nyunggai Warren Mundine, who argues – as recently as 2023 – that Australia Day should be changed to accommodate Indigenous people’s ongoing resentment and grief they associate with January 26, when their inhabitation of and sovereignty over this continent for upwards of 60,000 years was erased by a proclamation on behalf of the British crown. Mundine contradicts himself: on the one hand he says symbolism is meaningless, but on the other it is important.
Regardless, and not due to racism, any change the date ballot would be voted down. Polls published yesterday in Nine Media and NewsCorp showed between 60% and 90%of Australians rejecting the idea. As Labor pollster Kos Samaras notes: the left of politics has a “blind spot” as regards this debate. “Thousands of diverse Australians have significant sentimental attachment to this day. For many of them, it is an annual reminder of the day they became an Australian citizen.”
Accepting that the date will not be changed, I propose that Australia Day should be extended. This is the longtime argument of indigenous leader Noel Pearson. Writing in 2018 in The Australian, Pearson argued for marking Australia Day over January 25-26 as a “noble” compromise between old and new. In typically elegant prose he wrote: “The observance of Australia Day could commence on January 25 — the eve of the proclamation of British sovereignty over the east coast of the continent — and continue into January 26 … The announcement of Australian of the Year is already made on the evening of January 25.”
Pearson explains the dualism at play, in generous terms: “We can’t run away from January 26, the same as we can’t run away from January 25. The whitefellas then created a commonwealth under a Constitution that excluded blackfellas in 1901. The whitefellas are not going to return to England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. They are here to stay.”
He concluded by arguing for a “noble compromise between the old and the new”, recognising indigenous people’s prior and unceded sovereignty and the British creation of modern Australia, which would bring “together honour and empathy, remembrance and celebration”.
We cannot reverse the Voice outcome. Peter Dutton regrettably broke his promise to revisit minimal constitutional recognition. No one, and not me, argues that symbolic change alone will attend to the crises of health, education, violence and childhood neglect in Aboriginal communities. That, indeed, was the whole point of having a Voice to Parliament.
To #extendthedate is an eminently practical and empathetic proposal. It is real patriotism that honours John Curtin’s legacy: a dignified pride in one’s country, of loving one’s country but wanting to make it better.
And which Australian – new, old or Dutton – would vote against an extra public holiday?