Confronting Cancel Culture on Australia Day

Commentary

Every year at about this time, the unpatriotic Left begins its campaign to cancel or obliterate that long-established celebration known as Australia Day.

This year, I thought I’d get in early and anticipate the onslaught as it begins.

Firstly, the facts.

Jan. 26 is the anniversary of the landing of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove, and the raising of the Union Flag (the colors of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland) by Captain Arthur Phillip in 1788.

It was not until Feb. 7 that the new colony was formally proclaimed and Captain Phillip’s appointment as governor officially announced, but that first landing on the 26th has acquired a special prominence over more than two centuries and has been celebrated since the early years of the 19th century as Australia’s true foundation day.

It has borne several names over that period (for example Foundation Day, Anniversary Day), but “Australia Day” eventually stuck, gained universal acceptance in 1938, and it was formally gazetted by all states and territories in 1994.

Elements of the Aboriginal population have raised objections to its celebration at various times over the past 80 years.

They have argued that Jan. 26 should be remembered as a day of mourning, for it marks the symbolic ending of a kind of “golden age,” before Indigenous innocence was forever smothered by the ambitions of Europeans.

This is a powerful narrative that has gained strength with the telling and is now widely accepted not only by many, perhaps most, Australians of Aboriginal background, but also by members of the “progressive” Left who have no love for aspects of Western civilization such as Christianity, which they tend to characterize as “colonialism.”

So we are in an impasse. Most of us want to keep Australia Day as our national day, a public holiday of high importance, but a significant minority demur.

Dates Are Historical, Not Something We Can Just Change

Many local councils (so often breeding grounds for radical ideas) have decreed that they will no longer hold citizenship ceremonies on that date. Many individuals, especially young people, want to avoid causing offense by simply changing the date.

But you can’t change the date. Australia Day is an anniversary.

Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on Sept. 3, 1939. Not on the 2nd or the 4th, not in August or October, not in 1938 or 1940. Maybe they shouldn’t have done so at all; maybe they should have done so years earlier and not allowed Chamberlain’s prevarication.

But they didn’t. It was Sept. 3, whether you want to commemorate it or not.

The whole issue with Australia Day is therefore not the date, but whether we want to celebrate it at all.

Most of us still do.

Some perhaps only because they’re used to it, and think it’s nice to have another summer public holiday a month after Christmas.

But for many, it remains an important symbolic date because it marks the permanent planting of European civilization and settlement on this continent, of Christianity, and of the rule of Law, the English language, literature, music, art, and science (including medicine).

There is also “social conscience,” which is arguably the noblest achievement of the Judeo-Christian tradition, a conscience that continues to influence powerfully even those of us who have left our religious creeds behind.

So we can’t change that date, but ought we to choose a less confrontational one to celebrate the founding of our nation?

Another possibility for those who value the British connection would be Aug. 22, for it was on that date in 1770 that Captain Cook claimed the entire east coast of Australia for King George III.

Is that likely to be more appealing?

The fact is that neither side can win this kind of contest. For many Aboriginal Australians, every day is Invasion Day, every celebration on our part is a reminder of their loss.

What About Invasion Day?

One possible compromise would be to gazette an official “Invasion Day,” a national day of mourning to mark the end of Aboriginal control of the continent.

The first of many killings of Aboriginal people seems to have occurred in April 1794, but the exact date is not known.

A better choice might be the anniversary of the Myall Creek Massacre on June 10, 1838. At least 28 unarmed Aboriginals were killed on that day by a large party of settlers.

To the credit of the British system of justice, seven colonists were subsequently hanged for murder, the first time that white men suffered the death penalty for the killing of Indigenous people.

Celebrate the Good Things

But in the meantime, Australia Day on Jan. 26 will be celebrated or ignored or protested against.

The motives of protesters will range from genuine grief to political gamesmanship to commercial advantage. Woolworths is a good example of the last.

On the other side, there’ll be a certain kind of jingoistic pride in some quarters, or outright denial, or even the ugly excuse that the vanquished deserved what they got.

What’s needed, now more than ever, is respectful compromise.

Yes, the extinction of any human culture is a grievous thing and the grief must be acknowledged. But what were the alternatives?

Should Australia have been sequestered and preserved as a nation of hunter-gatherers, without any kind of Western interference? Or would the French or Spanish have been better colonists?

Really? Do we place no value at all on Western music, art, literacy, and medicine?

Can we not be big enough and generous enough to acknowledge that all men and women have suffered grief and misery throughout history, some at the hands of other human beings, some the victims of disease and ill fortune?

Let’s not revisit guilt decades and centuries too late, but recognize that a new nation has arisen from the combined DNA of Aboriginal Australians plus every other nation on Earth.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.