To the people who want to drape themselves in gold and green and ignore the reason why Australia Day exists, I say to you, "go for it". If there's one that unites us as a nation, it's not class, religion or ideology, colour, creed or roots, it isn't Doctor Marten's boots, it's that we all love having a public holiday. I suspect that half the reason that Australia doesn't become a republic is the fear of losing Queen's Birthday Weekend as a public holiday; despite the fact that the queen in question (Queen Victoria) died in 1901 and the day used to be called Empire Day. No, Australians love a public holiday and will accept the flimsiest of reasons for having one.
Actually, the reason why Australia Day is a public holiday, as opposed to the actual day when Australia became a nation, is that we already had a public holiday for the 1st of January in New Year's Day. Australia Day (or rather NSW Proclamation Day) became popular in the run up to 1888, then in the mid 1930s until 1938, and then again for 1988, for the Centenary, Sesquicentenary, and Bicentenary of white settlement. The date is very much about trying to declare a kind of white nationalism in the void of not really having any other national date to speak of. Australia was started with a vote and not a war; so there's no date of independence that makes any sense other than 1st January.
This is the 26th of January and as such, it is not the day that Australia became a nation (that was January 1), it is not the day that Australia decided to vote to become a nation (that was July 30), and worst of all it isn't even the day that any of the other unfriendly cousins which whom we share this massive island became states.
26th of January is the date on which, after landing in Botany Bay and deciding that Captain James Cook was a grotty little Yorkshireman who got it wrong, Captain Arthut Phillip ordered that the 11 Royal Navy ships which comprised the First Fleet sail around to the next inlet and land there.
The 26th of January is the day on which Captain Arthur Phillip RN, got off the ship and stuck the British flag into the soil; thus claiming it as the dumping ground for England's ne'er-do-wells. We're not exactly sure where the exact spot where this took place is and it's probably under a building at Circular Quay; so it's not like we could mark that spot anyway.
Nobody bothered to consult the Eora people what they thought when 11 Royal Navy ships of ghost people showed up in Warrane, which was probably a good thing as Captain Arthur Phillip RN spent the next few years blasting them off the face of the earth with repeated musket fire. The name "Sydney" is for Thomas "Turnip" Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney, who was the British Home Secretary at the time. It should be obvious by now that the the colony of New South Wales and the City of Sydney, were started with an act of knavery; backed up by guns and bloodshed.
If we whitewash the facts and truth of invasion, colonisation and dispossession of lands by Europeans on the First Nations Peoples of Australia; the repeated massacres, frontier warfare, deliberate genocides and removal from land of first people with relocation to 'protectorates', 'reserves', 'missions' and 'schools'; if you want to drape yourself in the Australian flag, put zinc on your nose and yell 'freedom' without having a clue what kind of freedom you are calling for, then I ask the question of why we specifically want the 26th of January itself.
Now all of this is probably fine if you are a white supremacist knave who thinks that ideologies such as identity politics and doctrinaire nationalism produces very fine fruit but if you examine that fruit just a little bit, you find that it is full of maggots with Doctorates.
The biggest reason why we continue to have the 26th of January instead of some other dates is twofold. Firstly, it gives the very vocal minority of actual racists something to whinge about. Secondly, if gives the Institute of Public Affairs, something to write pieces and whinge about in daily newspapers. The IPA by whinging about Australia Day, gets its annual whinge about Australia Day. Sections of the rightist media, get a free straw enemy who they get to set on fire. Rather than contributing to national unity, the right gets to drape themselves in gold and green and ignore the reason why Australia Day exists and to yell about class, religion and ideology, colour, creed and roots.
Meanwhile, the rest of us get a public holiday; without having to admit that the date actually celebrates the equivalent of Kristallnacht for first peoples.
No comments:
Post a Comment