What’s the significance of Australia Day and what does it mean to be Australian?

Indigenous Australians describe it as “Invasion Day” and argue there is nothing positive or beneficial about the arrival of the First Fleet.

The latest Meat and Livestock lamb advertisement, where MasterChef’s Poh Ling Yeow asks “aren’t we all boat people?”, doesn’t even mention Australia Day, instead celebrating cultural diversity and difference represented by multiculturalism.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Kerry Ryan from the Swinburne University of Technology, argues “the idea you can define what it means to be Australian is laughable” and, also in the Fairfax Press, Dale Hughes argues there is nothing significant about Australia Day as “a single date is culturally and socially relative”.

Wrong. The arrival of the First Fleet is one of the most important events in Australian history as it represents the first step in our development as a liberal, Western democracy based on English common law and a Westminster Parliamentary system.

The rights and freedoms we now take for granted, including freedom of assembly and speech, the right to a fair and timely trial, and the right to vote and elect a representative government, trace their origins to events that occurred on January 26, 1788.

As argued by the Perth legal academic, Augusto Zimmerman, “When the penal colony of New South Wales was established in 1788, the laws of England were transplanted into Australia” and “As a result, the legal sociopolitical institutions of Australia found their primary roots in the legal and sociopolitical traditions of England”.

The Mabo decision by the High Court of Australia, where indigenous Australians and Torres Strait Islanders were granted land rights, only happened because of a legal system inherited from England.

media_camera The rights and freedoms we now take for granted trace their origins to events that occurred on January 26, 1788. This is why we must celebrate Australia Day on January 26. (Pic: Supplied)

It’s no accident that those nations to our north, including China, Vietnam, Myanmar, Lao PDR and Cambodia, that were never settled by the British are totalitarian regimes where basic freedoms are denied and governments are oppressive and corrupt.

While it is true, especially since the end of the second world war, that Australian society is increasingly diverse and cosmopolitan, it is also true that in the 2011 census, when asked to describe their ancestry, approximately 90 per cent of Australian residents identified as English, Australian, Irish or Scottish.

The arrival of the First Fleet, in addition to bequeathing the nation with an English legal and political system also heralded the arrival of Christianity. According to the 2011 census Christianity, at approximately 61 per cent, is the largest religion and around Australia parliaments begin with the Lord’s Prayer.

While we are a secular society, where the constitution forbids favouring one religion over another, it is also true that without Christian hospitals, schools and charitable organisations Australian’s education, health and welfare sectors would collapse.

Christian concepts like the dignity of the person, the right to individual liberty and a commitment to social justice and the common good also underpin our legal and political systems and way of life.

One of the common arguments against celebrating Australia Day is that because we are a multicultural society it is wrong to favour one cultural group over another.

Taken to its extreme that argument is that all cultures are equal.

How do you celebrate Australia day? How do you celebrate Australia day?

But, as argued by the ALP’s Chris Bowen, in a 2011 speech when Minister for Immigration, a commitment to diversity and difference does not mean that all customs and beliefs are equally valid or acceptable.

Bowen argues that multiculturalism will only work when it is “underpinned by respect for traditional Australian values”. Bowen goes on to argue “Australian governments do not defend cultural practices and ideas inconsistent with our values of democracy, justice, equality and tolerance”.

Much like Peter Dutton, the current Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Bowen argues if there is a clash between what immigrants believe and “individual freedom and rule of law, then these Australian values win out. They must”.

While politically incorrect and much to the angst of Australia’s cultural-left elites, the reality is that there are uniquely Australian values. While geographically a part of Asia, our heritage and traditions can only be understood in the context of western civilisation.

Australia is an egalitarian society where respect has to be earned instead of being granted by birth. Australians also distrust bludgers and those who believe it’s OK to rort the system or that the world owes them a living.

Given the chance and freed from government restraint, Australians are also entrepreneurial and risk-takers. Australians, on the whole, are independently minded and happy to give newcomers the benefit of the doubt unless they are hostile to our way of life.

Instead of denigrating Australia Day, we should all recognise that it’s only because of the First Fleet that we are such a peaceful, prosperous and stable country — that’s why so many migrants want to live here.

Dr Kevin Donnelly is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University and author of The Culture of Freedom