Australia Day reflection

I’ve written a couple of posts about Australia Day in previous years.

In 2005 I wrote that Australia Day didn’t mean much more to me than just being a holiday. In 2007, I suggested having a new date for our national day.

I wrote on Wendy’s Cultured Views this morning:

“I don’t like the choice of date because it’s NSW focused and marks the founding of a prison. I would prefer Australia Day to be on June 9, the anniversary of Matthew Flinders completing the first circumnavigation of Australia. Get rid of the Queen’s birthday holiday (it’s the wrong date anyhow) and introduce a new holiday on December 31 for New Year so January 1 can officially be Federation Day.”

At first I thought I was alone in being disturbed by the growing jingoistic nationalism associated with Australia Day. I started writing a blog post, but stopped because I thought it would invite redneck attacks.

I followed the search term for “Australia” on Twitter. It was full of presumably young people saying “Happy Australia Day” and describing their plans for beer, beach and barbecue.

There were a few left-wing radicals throwing in remarks about “Invasion Day” and the dispossession of the Aborigines.

On holiday at Mandurah a couple of years ago every second car had an Australian flag attached (probably made in China). People wore hats with Australian flags and their towels were Australian flags. They probably wore underpants with Australian flags on them.

I struggled to pinpoint why exactly, but this bothered me a little.

In Mount Gambier today it was more subdued, but I saw young men walking down the street wrapped in Australian flags.

John Birmingham neatly articulated my concerns in his Blunt Instrument article for the Brisbane Times, headlined: “Since when did dumb-arsed nationalism become compulsory?”

Birmingham writes: “I don’t mind getting ruinously drunk. I don’t mind the odd cockroach race. And I love a barbecue, especially if there’s ruinously drunken cockroach racing involved. But one of the things I really like about Australia, or I used to anyway, was our quiet reluctance to wave the flag in everyone’s face; a reluctance which has gradually given way to an uglier, brutish readiness to paint the flag on our arses and sit on the face of anyone who looks even remotely disinclined to play along.”

Some of the reader comments nailed it for me:

“Big business has seized Australia Day as a dumbed-down Down Under 4th of July and all in the name of selling more beer and lamb to the easily-manipulated Southern Cross tattoos-types who are just looking for a excuse to get tanked up, jump into the ute and go bash anyone who looks remotely unAustralian. Sorry – I don’t buy into the whole tub thumping, beer swilling thing and I think one of the great attributes that Australia has lost, is that quiet (dare I say it, almost British) reserve and dignity, that we as a people used to display at home and aboard. Regionally, this reserve won us more friends than this new stance of smashing foreigners in the face and shouting Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi.”

and

“I think it’s time we returned to the real reason for Australia Day – The Day Off. If there wasn’t a public holiday, I doubt if anybody would even know it was Australia Day. Or care. Nobody gives a rats about our national day – If you want to see a truly united Australia, try to take our Day Off away. (Make sure you have a current Will first, though.) Actually, this applies to ALL our public holidays. And we would do anything to get more of them. Waving the southern cross is just for show so they think we’re patriotic enough to keep our holiday. Bollocks. We’d wave shamrocks if it meant St Patrick’s day were a public holiday too.”

I like this one:

“Seems to me that the Australian Of The Year gong provides a causal link between dumb-arsed nationalism and Straya Day. Steve Waugh smacks a few balls to the boundary, and suddenly he’s the best citizen we’ve got? (Bermuda resident) Pat Rafter puts in a gutsy 5-set loss to Goran in the Wimbledon final, and we can’t wait to drape him in diamonds? Cathy Freeman, bless her, runs a lap of an athletics track rooly quickly and she gets AOTY? John Farnham assures us that we’re the voice, and that’s justification enough to parade him before the masses?”

A few people traced the rise of Australia Day nationalism to former Prime Minister John Howard’s insistence the public holiday occur on the actual date.

Before 1996 (I think), the Australia Day holiday occurred on the nearest Monday to create a long weekend.

Because January 26 was a Tuesday this year, the holiday was on the Tuesday, but in typical Australian fashion, many people “took a sickie” yesterday to make it a four-day long weekend.

And many of them will be hungover and unproductive tomorrow, or sunburnt, if they bother to show up for work.

I liked it better when Australia Day was just a long weekend, like the Queen’s birthday, with no embellishments.