From: Phil Shannon [Email him]
On 26th January 1788, the British First Fleet landed at Sydney Cove, bringing Governor Arthur Philip and white, European civilization to an Australia which had been occupied for some 60,000 years solely by Australia’s Aborigines, a stone-age people. January 26th is the national birthday of modern Australia and has long been celebrated as Australia’s national day. It is both Australia’s equivalent of America’s July 4th and the political, culture-war equivalent of America’s Columbus Day.
The Aboriginal Grievance Industry, and their woke white auxiliaries, however, mobilize around a demand to “Change the Date” by (1) picking a new day for Australia’s national day, (2) renaming Australia Day to “Invasion Day” and (3) guilt-tripping white Australians into paying 250 years’ back rent to Aborigines for living on “stolen land” ['Pay the rent': Invasion Day rallies around Australia protest against 26 January celebrations, by Luke Henriques-Gomes, Guardian, January 27, 2020]
The culture war over Australia Day is, however, a genuine minority affair. A survey of voters in two federal electorates (Australia Day survey) has found that (1) 84% of Australians do not support changing Australia’s national day from “January 26th to some other date”, (2) 87% of Australians are “proud to celebrate Australia Day on 26th January”, and (3) only 9% of Australians regard 26th January as ”Invasion Day, a day to be ashamed of”.
The center-left Australian Labor Party had pandered to its woke constituency by proposing a national referendum on the issue of “Changing the Date” but the results of this new survey (the two electorates surveyed are held narrowly by Labor) have convinced the Labor Party to join with the governing conservative Liberal Party to keep January 26th as Australia Day.
It is a tradition in Australian sport that when the (trailing) opposition’s on-field sledging (what Americans call "trash talk") and histrionics get too annoying, the (leading) team simply “points to the scoreboard” which says all that needs to be said about who’s in front. Well, the scoreboard for the annual clash over Australia Day (as with many other woke issues) says it all—the Great Unwoked are winning, the activist Woke irritants are losing.
Phil Shannon is a veteran working class socialist and VDARE.com supporter
