Increasing numbers of Australians question whether their titular national day is cause for celebration at all

Australia’s deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, has told his fellow citizens who do not share his love of Australia Day they are “miserable” and can “crawl under a rock and hide”.

The bonhomie, beer, and barbecues of Australia’s titular national day of 26 January – marking the beginning of European settlement in 1788 – is increasingly attended in the 21st century by a furore over whether the date is cause for celebration at all.

Significant sections of Australia’s population – most notably Indigenous Australians who see the day as marking the beginning of more than two centuries of displacement and discrimination – dispute the anniversary’s merit, labelling it instead “Invasion Day” or “Survival Day”.



It marks the date the British “First Fleet”, led by Captain Arthur Phillip, landed at Port Jackson and founded the settlement of New Albion, which was to become to modern city of Sydney.

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The Fleet was 1,400 people, the majority of them convicts, and their arrival marked the beginning of European settlement on a land then known as New Holland, and regarded legally as Terra nullius – belonging to no one – despite more than 50,000 years of habitation by Australia’s indigenous nations.

About 750,000 Indigenous Australians are estimated to have been living in Australia when the First Fleet arrived.

In Australia’s modern political landscape, there is a certain irony too that the day celebrates the arrival to Australia of unannounced visitors by boat, an act now condemned as “illegal” and “un-Australian” by successive governments who have enacted progressively harsher policies to punish people who migrate irregularly.

Australia Day has, in recent years, become increasingly nationalistic in its celebration, with overt displays of flag-waving and wearing, adoption of the national green-and-gold sporting colours, and adornment with Southern Cross tattoos (permanent and temporary).

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A man shows off Australian flag tattoos during Australia Day celebrations. Photograph: Chris Hopkins/Getty Images

Several Australians of the Year, most recently Indigenous footballer Adam Goodes, who was honoured in 2014 for his contribution to sport and to his community, have said the date of Australia Day should be changed.

“It’s a very sad day for a lot of our mob ... because of the sadness and the mourning and the sorrow of our people and a culture that unfortunately has been lost to me through generations.”

The head of the prime minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council, Warren Mundine, has argued that 26 January has a devastating and emotional impact for many Australians.

“Most Aboriginal indigenous people want to celebrate Australia Day and they feel they are Australians, that they are part of the Australian community,” he said.

Mundine said 26 January marked the commencement of indigenous people being displaced from their land, massacres, children being taken from their parents, and the slow destruction of languages and culture. “It was just like the end of the world for a lot of communities.”

For Australia Day 2017, a collaboration of 12 hip-hop artists have released a track entitled Change the Date. In it, Northern Territory-raised artist Birdz rhymes: “Black lives turn to black matter / Clap sticks clap to the rhythm of a cocked-back hammer clap bang / Here go another officer locking up another one of us like a popular fun thing to do / Another genocide on the BBQ.”

But there is government resistance to any date change. Joyce – who last made international headlines when he threatened to kill Johnny Depp’s illegally imported dogs – said changing the date was an example of “political correctness gone mad” and that those who didn’t like Australia Day should “go to work”.

“I just get sick of these people who every time, every time there’s something on, they just want to make you feel guilty,” Joyce told radio.

“They don’t like Christmas, they don’t like Australia Day, they’re just miserable, gutted people and I wish they would crawl under a rock and hide for a little bit.”

Celebration of Australia Day began when Australia was still a colony of the United Kingdom, in the 1880s. But it was not fully established as a public holiday across the country until 1994.



Now, it is formally marked with the announcement of the Australian of the Year – for 2017, the biomolecular scientist Alan Mackay-Sim – and a series of concerts, public events, and citizenship ceremonies.

Less formally, it is marked with barbecues, beach trips, and beer, and a radio countdown of the 100 most popular songs of the year.

A host of alternative dates for Australia Day have been proposed, including 1 January, the day the modern nation-state of Australia came into being in 1901; 25 April, Anzac Day, commemorating the 1915 landing by Australian troops at Gallipoli, part of the British Expeditionary Force’s unsuccessful invasion of that peninsula during the first world war, and; 3 December , the date of the 1854 Eureka Stockade, an uprising by goldminers against repressive colonial taxation and regarded by many as the birth of Australian popular democracy.



The date, however, appears unlikely to change in the near-term, especially without a consensus alternative with overwhelming community support. It has been speculated that Australia’s new national day might be marked when – and if – the country becomes a republic.