Australia Day aka Invasion Day or Day of Mourning 2024: far right media and politicians making an increasingly ugly day even uglier

First it was verbal attacks on local government councils which intend to change how they celebrate Australia Day or hold their citizenship ceremonies on a January day other than the 26th or split their official and community activities over two days. 

Then the mainstream media, led by baying News Corp staff opinion writers and political commentators, looked about for other imaginary 'woke' enemies of the public holiday designated Australia Day.

Following an early January 2024 announcement by the Woolworths Group that while it sells Australian flags all year round it will not be stocking additional items for Australia Day due to a decrease in store sales in recent years, the meeja decided this announcement made its supermarkets a suitable target.

Opposition Leader and LNP Member for Dickson (Qld) Peter Dutton eagerly jumped on the bandwagon accusing the Woolworths Group and others of "peddling woke agendas" and calling for a boycott of all Woolies stores - with predictable response from those who voted "No" at the 'Voice' referendum.

An even more predictable response came from racist cranks and the 'cookers' amongst us.

Teneriffe store, inner Brisbane City Qld
IMAGE: 7 News, 16 January 2024

Cleveland Central store, south-east Brisbane Qld
IMAGE:  Herald-Sun, 16 January 2024

Woolworths Group, 24 January 2024:

A message from Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci to customers

Dear Customers,

Over the last two weeks, there's been much commentary in the media and we have had direct feedback from our customers and our team regarding our approach to selling Australia Day merchandise.

I have tried to read all customer complaints and team incident reports, and I’m writing this in the hope of clarifying our position and also asking everyone to treat our team with respect.

In terms of the Woolworths position:

As a proud Australian and New Zealand retailer, we aren’t trying to ‘cancel’ Australia Day. Rather, Woolworths is deeply proud of our place in providing the fresh food that brings Australians together every day. As evidenced during COVID or increasingly natural disasters such as what is currently unfolding with Cyclone Kirrily in Northern Queensland. Woolworths will always support Australians in the moments that matter.

In terms of merchandising - our commercial decision to not stock specific Australian Day general merchandise was made on the basis of steeply declining sales. The decision to stock this mostly imported merchandise has to be made almost 12 months in advance. So as a business decision, it doesn’t make commercial sense.

Rather than stocking imported Australian themed merchandise, Woolworths is focused on what we do best 365 days of the year – providing the best of Australian fresh food for Australia Day long weekend gatherings with family and friends and working hard to ensure we deliver great value.

There are many other ways in which we are supporting our customers and our team to celebrate Australia, such as acknowledging the best of Australian products in our stores and online and supporting our team to mark Australia Day with their local community.

As a first generation Australian who gratefully calls Australia home, I look forward to getting together with my family and I hope that you too spend Australia Day in your own way and cherish what it means to be Australian.

Brad Banducci

Woolworths CEO

It seems that a number of Ballina Shire councillors are about to show an ugly side

 

Ballina Local Government Area covers 485.6 sq. kilometres with an estimated 46,760 local residents (ABS ERP 2022).

A conservative estimate is that 1,824 men, women & children in this local population are of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander descent, with the majority being from First Nations family groups who have lived in the eastern Australia coastal zone since time immemorial.

There are many people living in Ballina today whose families have been birthing their babies and burying their dead in this local government area for tens of thousands of years and they don’t deserve either the level of cultural insensitivity or the false historical narrative of Australia Day celebrations being held on 26 January every year to commemorate the invasion of their country and the subjugation of their families, by an arrogant British Government on the other side of the globe.

However, some Ballina Shire councillors have tin ears and it seems a steely resolve to perpetuate the type of one-dimensional potted 'histories' sometimes found on the back of cereal boxes, lids of gift biscuit tins or sides of shopping bags.

A rescission motion has been put forward for consideration by Council in the Chamber on Thursday 23 June 2023 seeking to nullify Resolution 250523/17:

11.1 Rescission Motion - Australia Day Celebrations 

Councillor Cr Buchanan

Cr Ramsey

Cr Bruem

This is how the the situation is playing out in local media.....

The Echo, 20 June 2023:

Last month’s Ballina Council meeting saw a decision to move the Australia Day Awards and Citizenship Ceremony, to be held at Lennox Head Cultural Centre, from the controversial date of 26 January 2024, to the evening of 25 January. This amendment to an earlier motion was moved by Cr Simon Chate with the support of Cr Stephen McCarthy.

Two conservative councillors allied with Mayor Sharon Cadwallader, Nigel Buchanan and Eva Ramsey, were absent from the meeting when this decision was made. These two councillors, along with Cr Rod Bruem, have since announced that they intend to launch a motion of rescission at this week’s meeting, to return the local ceremony date to 26 January.

As Cr Simon Chate told The Echo, ‘The recission motion is likely to succeed as they have the numbers, with Cr Eoin Johnston and Mayor Cadwallader’s casting vote.

‘There has been strong emailed support from the community for the change of date to the more inclusive and welcoming 25th of January and only a handful of emails supporting the January 26 date,’ he said.

‘In my opinion, if this rescission motion is successful (and barring a miracle, it will be), this is a real lost opportunity for Ballina Council to show compassion and cultural sensitivity to the pain felt amongst many of our First Nations people and their supporters around the January 26 date.’

Simple gesture

According to Cr Chate, ‘Such a simple gesture, to move the awards ceremony forward by about 15 hours, would make our ceremony open, inclusive and welcoming. To rescind it would be narrow-minded and unkind.

‘At every meeting, we stop for an acknowledgement of country and for Council to move the ceremony back to the 26th of January seems dismissive and culturally insensitive.’

Cr Chate suggests that people who agree that the issue is important should contact their councillors. The rescission motion will be debated at this Thursday’s meeting in Ballina.

Australian Prime Minister can't stop people speaking out on the matter of the annual anniversary of the invasion of Australia

One of the reasons why Prime Minister Scott Morrison will fail in his bid to deny Australia's colonial history.......

The Daily Telegraph, 28 January 2021:

Hayley Talbot has long been recognised as a leader, an innovator, and a person with a drive to create positive change within the Clarence Valley.

In the past year, among a myriad of projects she helped drive a revitalisation of koala habitat devastated by bushfire with a program that planted 5000 trees and empowered many in the community who had lost their jobs due to COVID-19.

Along with her team, she also hosts a safe space for young women through her Blanc Space business in Yamba, where they provide an atmosphere to create, learn and converse openly.

It was for these works she was this week awarded the Clarence Valley’s Citizen of the Year.

While Ms Talbot said she was grateful to be honoured, she made the brave decision to use the opportunity to express what she described as an incongruous meeting of both celebration and mourning on Australia Day.

“... in good conscience I have to say, we should be doing this on another day. Ms Talbot said the decision to speak her mind and to receive the award was one she deliberated over, and admitted nerves beforehand, having heard the crowd boo 2019 Citizen of the Year Susan Howland for expressing her views at the ceremony.

“I was concerned at that, but I thought that if I didn’t accept the nomination, and didn’t show up, I would lose the opportunity to speak that truth and add to the conversation that needs to be leading the discourse on Australia Day,” she said.

“I know that conversations were catalysed among new hearts and minds, that was my goal, and I consider that a vindication of my decision to attend the ceremony and accept the award.” Ms Talbot told the hard truths of our history, including the atrocities perpetrated on the banks of the Clarence, and urged the crowd to consider the voices of those most hurt by the day.

“I can’t stand here today wholly with joy in my heart knowing that the neighbours I’m called to love are shattered apart by a day that’s considered a day of mourning by many Aboriginal people,” she said.

“I can’t stand here another white woman in a room of mostly white people pretending that in 2021 we’re all equal when we are governed by a system that still says we’re not.

“There’s a ‘ray’ in Australia, and there’s an us too, but only if we’re brave enough to tell the full story. Even though a date change can’t change it can we at least try?” 

A Quote for Australia Day-Invasion Day 2021

 

“I'm astounded at the comment [from the Prime Minister]…..

"It indicates to me a very shallow understanding of the arrival of the First Fleet and the impact of that on Aboriginal Australia.

"It's a very selfish comment. He said nothing about the arrival of that fleet on the Aboriginal owners who own the place.

"There's no empathy there at all. He's turning it inward. It's all about self-praise and aggrandisement of white fella colonisation.

"It's so shallow in that it doesn't involve inclusion or diversity.

"I just think he's very lightweight when it comes to understanding Australian history and Aboriginal perspectives about the British colonisation of the country.”

[Former Australian of the Year. Northern Territory Treaty Commissioner and ANU Professor of Law, Michael Dodson AM, a proud Yawuru man, quoted in ABC News online, 22.01.21]

An example of how Australian colonial history was re-written

In 1803 the first British soldiers and convicts landed in Van Diemen's Land and in 1824 it became a separate colony to New South Wales. 

By then the colonial population of the island numbered est. 11,967 souls and a population explosion had begun which expanded across more of the land.

Between 1825 and 1831 - when the British-European population had almost tripled - Aboriginal resistance to invasion and occupation of their country increased, with 219 colonists and 260 Aboriginals reported killed. [Nicholas Clements, 2014] 

Though the reality is that Aboriginal deaths were likely considerably higher as this number may not have counted all men, women and children gratuitously murdered, as it is believed that few so-called 'reprisal' incidents were officially recorded at the time they occurred. [Hobart Town Gazette December 3, 1823; Ryan, 1996:86-88; Bonwick, 1870:99, Hobart Town Gazette May 5, 1827; Colonial Times May 11, 1827; George 2002:13, Lee 1927:41; AOT VDL 5/1 No.2, 14/1/28 in SciencePo, 5 March 2008]

However, contemporary colonial history often tried to paint a different picture......

 

Legend reads: "Why Massa Gubernor", said Black Jack. "You Profflamation all gammon.
"How blackfellow read him eh? He no learn him read book."
"Read that then", said the Governor, pointing to the picture.'

“Images are treacherous; labels more so. As it happens, Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines 1816 had nothing to do with Governor Davey. It does not date from 1816. And it is not really a proclamation. It was commissioned by Lieutenant Governor Sir George Arthur; in 1830, around one hundred copies were published by the government printer in Hobart, placed on wooden boards, and disseminated. The misattribution dates from its re-discovery in the 1860s and might be explained in two ways. First, by setting the date back almost a generation, the notion that the British colony was founded on the principle of the rule of law is thereby promoted.

Law always needs some mythic retrospectivity to shore up its legitimacy—a penal colony established by dispossession and maintained by violence over whites and blacks alike, especially. The violence and chaos that mark the birth of any new legal order thus become cloaked in a myth that emphasizes instead its inevitability, its order, and its naturalness. By the 1860s, it surely served the interests of Tasmania’s free settlers to inject the rule of law into their narrative of legitimate settlement, as early as possible.

Secondly, Thomas Davey cuts a more attractive figure as author of the Proclamation than Sir George Arthur. As governor, Davey had protested in 1814 his “utter indignation and abhorrence” about the kidnapping of Aboriginal children. But Governor Arthur was an altogether more paradoxical figure, a man who oscillated wildly between expressions of concern for the Aborigines and military campaigns against them; between inciting white settlers to kill Tasmania’s first inhabitants and expressing outrage when they did. He was a man who combined eruptions of extreme action with outbursts of remorseful reflection. Above all, as the man behind the notorious Black Line, the dragnet which attempted to corral like cattle the Aboriginal population of the whole island, Arthur symbolizes a way of thinking about the original Tasmanians that “would be laughable were it not so criminally tragic.” Such a background surely taints and complicates the promise of the rule of law.

The cartoon was suggested and apparently drawn by Arthur’s Surveyor-General George Frankland, and he in turn was inspired by Aboriginal bark paintings.....

The paradox that this drawing raises lies in the difficulty of squaring “the real wishes of the government,” as the Proclamation presents it, with the “the actual state of things” in Van Diemen’s Land. At the very same time that Governor Arthur’s Proclamation elaborated an expansive commitment to the rule of law, he was extending martial law throughout Tasmania. Martial law had initially been declared in 1828 in the face of Aboriginal resistance to colonial settlement. In February of 1830, a reward of five pounds was proclaimed for the capture of adult Aborigines (two pounds for a child), describing them as “a horde of [s]avages” consumed by “revengeful feelings.” In October of 1830, faced by “continued repetitions of the most wanton and sanguinary acts of violence and outrage,” Arthur extended martial law to “every part of this Island.” On October 7, “the [white] community . . . en masse” was to spread out like a human chain across the whole island and, by moving forward, herd the Black or Aboriginal Natives on to Tasman’s Peninsula where they could be penned in once and for all.

Yet martial law had always been understood as involving the suspension of the rule of law. In 1829, the brutal murder of an Aboriginal woman was deemed by the Solicitor-General to be beyond the reach of the common law precisely because it fell under the very broad rubric of “necessary operations against the enemies.” Subject to “an active and extended system of Military operations against the Natives generally” and until the “cessation of hostilities,” Aboriginal Tasmanians were specifically placed outside the rule of law. The Black Line, a dismal and notorious folly, led to the capture of a grand total of two Aborigines and the shooting of two more, but it was powerfully evocative of the colonial government’s attitude towards them…." 

[Desmond Manderson (January 2013) in NYLS Law Review, Vol 57, Issue 1, “THE LAW OF THE IMAGE AND THE IMAGE OF THE LAW”, pp. 157-158]

Is Australian Minister for Immigration. Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs & Liberal MP for Banks David Coleman trying to stir up trouble ahead of Australia Day 2019 in the hope of gaining some nebulous political advantage?

Australian Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs & Liberal MP for Banks David Coleman, a Scott Morrison appointee, appears to want to renew the culture wars ahead of the May 2019 federal general election.

ABC News, 13 January 2013:

The Immigration Minister David Coleman has announced he will update the that governs how citizenship ceremonies are conducted, to force councils to hold them on January 26.

"Some councils say NO to Australia Day. We believe that all councils should say YES to Australia Day....in this wonderful, wonderful nation that we are so proud to be a part of."

Australian Associated Press (AAP), 13 January 2019:

Citizenship ceremonies will have to take place on January 26 and a dress code will also apply, in a federal government move to protect Australia Day.

The federal government has revised the citizenship code to make it compulsory for all councils to hold citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day, it has been reported.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has told the Sunday Telegraph the government will "protect our national day and ensure it is respected".

"We believe all councils who are granted the privilege of conducting citizenship ceremonies should be required to conduct a ceremony on Australia Day," he told the newspaper.

Under changes to the Australian Citizenship Ceremonies Code to be introduced in 2020, councils must hold a second citizenship ceremony on September 17 - Australian Citizenship Day - and new citizens will have to abide by a strict dress code that bans boardshorts and thongs.

Long before Coleman's announcement Welcome to Country had posted notice of these 
events scheduled for Saturday, 26 January 2019:

Narrm (Melbourne) – Invasion Day 2019 #AbolishAustraliaDay (Hosted by Warriors of Aboriginal Resistance WAR & BrisbaneAboriginal-SovereignEmbassy ) – Jan 26  

Sydney – Invasion Day 2019 (Hosted by Fighting In Resistance Equally FIRE) – Jan 26 

Meanjin (Brisbane) – Invasion Day 2019 (Hosted by WAR) – Jan 26 

Perth – Invasion Day Rally (Hosted by local Indigenous activists) – Jan 26 

Adelaide – Invasion Day Protest (Hosted by Occupy Adelaide) – Jan 26  

Note: Under the NSW Public Holidays Act 2010 Australia Day will be officially celebrated on Monday 28^th January 2019 and the year after that on Monday 27th January 2020.