Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s seven words have generated far more heat than they should have and very little light. “Lest. We. Forget.” she said, “(Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine …)” And off we went, on another Anzac Day witch-hunt, rather like the Scott McIntyre one two years ago, but this seemed to have a harder edge because Abdel-Magied was black, Muslim, noisy, a woman, and wore a hijab, where McIntyre was or did none of those things.

When you think about it, though, what better day than 25 April to raise important issues such as the fate of refugees in hell-holes? We are told that the men of Anzac a century ago – and servicemen and women since – were fighting to defend our values. So why not bring out some values along with the medals, some things we care deeply about? Abdel-Magied could have added: “Lest We Forget: domestic violence, child sexual abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, poverty, Indigenous disadvantage, frontier wars.”

The backlash probably would have been just as strong had Abdel-Magied focused on these issues, because she would still have been seen as “hijacking” a “sacred” occasion. Many Australians’ need for regular sentimental remembrance would still have trumped thinking about important matters in our present and future.

Anzac Day, like Christmas and Easter, is for some of us a day to put normal affairs to one side. On the other hand, it seemed to be OK for Barnaby Joyce and others to hijack the furore over Abdel-Magied to bash the ABC, and for readers of the Daily Telegraph and similar outlets to have a whack at Muslims – some of the comments on Andrew Bolt’s blog were breathtaking in their crudity and brutality – or let fly with that great Australian riposte “piss off back to where you came from.”

People involved with the Honest History project have long hoped that the current obsession with Anzac would be the last gasp of a white male Anglo-Celtic Australia. Maybe not. It has been interesting to see how many of those screeching at Abdel-Magied have been women, some of them doing it rather nastily, like Lisa Oldfield on Sky News.

But the Anglo-Celt Anzackers – Anzackery is the extreme form of the Anzac secular religion – have also been trying hard to recruit recent arrivals, including Muslims, to the received view of Anzac. Andrew Bolt approved of flag-waving Muslims at this year’s marches, and a schools booklet from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs included Samir, a refugee from Sudan, feeling obliged to get his head around Anzac.

Prime minister Gillard’s office, planning for the Anzac centenary, called for a second focus group report when the first threw up some concerns about multicultural attitudes to Anzac. The second report assuaged concerns, with the inclusion of responses from people with Muslim-sounding names. Gwenda Tavan writes in The Honest History Book that in our still Anglo-Celtic dominated Australia “the best marker of immigrants’ success is their capacity to become invisible, through absorption into the national community.” Signing up to the traditional version of Anzac is part of the deal.

If Abdel-Magied preferred not to become a card-carrying Anzacker – or even an invisible honorary Anglo-Celt – should she just have pulled her head in for a while? This is known to people who have served in the Australian Defence Force as “showing situational awareness” and critics of received views get hit with it a lot.

The trouble is that situational awareness usually comes without a time limit. How long would Abdel-Magied be required to keep mum? A week? A month? Longer? “Lest We Forget” is one of those “icons,” like the flag or the national anthem, which evoke particular emotions at any time. The demand for situational awareness soon slops over into lasting censorship and suppression.

It’s a shame that Abdel-Magied withdrew her remarks and apologised. We need more feisty, outspoken people like her, not fewer. The families of soldiers who died in the first world war received from a grateful King George V a medallion (known as “the King’s Penny” or “the Dead Man’s Penny”) which carried the words “He died for freedom and honour”. In Australia, 100 years on, that freedom should include the freedom to have – and express – awkward views.

David Stephens is secretary of the Honest History coalition, editor of its website and a co-editor with Alison Broinowski of The Honest History Book.