Each year Australia Day becomes a focus for good and for bad (flag-waving) patriotism as it sparks new social tensions. Once a matter of buckets, spades and sandcastles, it now has regular controversies – flag cape-wearing adolescents in the past and this year, the lamb ad and the poster with Muslim girls wearing headscarfs celebrating Australia Day.
Like all traditions, Australia Day was invented and evolves. Once "Anniversary Day" in New South Wales, it was later held on the nearest Monday, rather than the date.
Except ceremonial days can go as well as come. Departed are weeks for the battles of Britain and the Coral Sea. Labour Day morphed into Moomba in Victoria and into the now departed Waratah Festival in Sydney.
As a seventh-generation descendant of the first settlers of Tasmania, the marine Robert Alomes who came in 1804, and as a historian of Australian nationalism, I am doubly aware of Australia Day's contradictions.
It is neither rocket science nor political correctness (which I abhor) to recognise that my family are descended from settlers, but also from settler-invaders, who took over Indigenous land. Just simple, immutable fact which shock jocks and extreme tabloid columnists cannot deny.
I feel no personal responsibility for what earlier generations did. At the same time I can understand why Aboriginals reject the celebration of an invasion and its aftermath. As I have no intention of celebrating the burglar who came to our house years ago and relieved us of heritage family jewellery, as well as a TV set, I can understand Indigenous distaste for the original invasion days.
Following Fremantle's example, we need to find a new day not accurately described as "Invasion Day". This is particularly important as we prepare to include Indigenous Australians in the constitution and discuss a treaty between the Aboriginal peoples and the invaders.
At the same time, we need to review other aspects of Australia Day.
Social media complaints about the young Muslim women poster sometimes make partial sense as well as reflecting the violence of the trolls.
Australia Day has at times focused only on multiculturalism. That emphasis offends a number of "old Australians" who feel left out, many of them hearing the call of Pauline Hanson and One Nation. No, we are not all immigrants. No, we did not lack a culture until postwar immigration, despite its many benefits. At our best we established a "social democracy of manners" and a degree of egalitarianism, which we should value even more now when it is under threat.
After many generations our settlers deserve recognition. When do you become a local in a country town? When did the Picts, the Celts and the Normans become English? Similarly, "Old Australians" deserve a place on the celebratory stage.
While we rightly celebrate multiculturalism, and ethnic dance groups provide an excellent volunteer rent–a-crowd for Australia Day parades (the schoolkids are on holidays, the armed services are expensive), we also need to recognise the best of our Australian traditions.
As several Australian historians – including Henry Reynolds, historian of Indigenous resistance and of the invaders' racism – have observed, Australia was also a world leader in political and social progress in the era around Federation.
Wearing my other hat as the historian of Australian nationalism, it is important to recognise Australia's distinctive and best traditions, perhaps including Australian ironies, as in the original lamb ads. At the same time we must criticise the less good traditions, and discern the best ideas, whether local or derived from overseas.
In my summary, following that jingly Australia Day ad, we need to "celebrate what's great", and also "criticise what ain't".
A reinvention of Australia Day does not involve a rejection of multiculturalism. What it should do, however, is to show a deeper understanding of how Australia has evolved over time.
Take for example Wogs Out of Work, and comedians Vince Sorrenti and Anh Do. Their "ethnic" comedy is actually in an Australian vein. Like the music of the Easybeats, Australian and imported culture resulted in a creative fusion.
Australian multiculturalism has actually contributed to what I call the "Big River" theory of Australian society. Different groups have come and over time have intermarried. Their cultures are like streams running into the "Big River", the human river of the society and culture of this dry continent. At the same time, those streams have merged into its waters, changing it slightly, even as they have created some islands of heritage.
A new and inclusive Australia Day – held on a less conflictual day, such as Constitution Day in May or Wattle Day in early September – can involve the recognitions we need. First, a recognition of Indigenous Australian history, and of Australia's settlers, that is settler-invaders we must admit, and of the several generations who followed them. Then, the important recognition of the waves of people of the last 70 years.
A more inclusive Australia Day will help us recognise the past, celebrate what's good in the present and help us build a better future.
The Australia Day status quo with gestures towards multiculturalism is a recipe for continued stress – a guarantor of populist politics and the destructive culture of angry trolls.
We need to act. Governments need to act. Institutions need to act. To reinvent Australia Day as an inclusive day for all Australians. Only that reinvention will stem the tides of angry populism and resultant internecine conflict.
RMIT University Adjunct Professor Stephen Alomes is a historian of Australian nationalism and populism.
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