Australia Day will never be cancelled

Attempts to cancel Australia Day are now practically an annual tradition. Ahead of this year’s festivities, Woolworths, Australia’s biggest supermarket chain, announced it would stop selling Australian-themed merchandise. Last year, a handful of left-wing local councils refused to hold citizenship ceremonies that would have coincided with the national holiday on 26 January. As Australia Day 2025 approaches, for a moment it looked as if hundreds of pubs were going to join in the boycott.

This week, pub chain Australian Venue Co caused uproar when it decided to ban Australia Day events in its more than 200 venues, supposedly to avoid causing ‘hurt for some of our patrons and our team’. But after threats of a customer boycott, and with lists of the venues circulating on social media, the chain issued a hurried retraction. ‘It is not for us to tell anyone whether or how to celebrate Australia Day’, a panicked statement said, along with the usual platitudes about not wanting to ‘divide’ the community.

So why did the Australian Venue Co announce the ban in the first place? For many years now, bashing Australia Day has been a well-established way for companies and public figures to establish their progressive bona fides. And for much of the past decade, it really did look as if Australia Day was on the way out. Indigenous and anti-racist campaigners held huge rallies with names like ‘Change the Date’ and ‘No Pride in Genocide’. Posters referring to ‘Invasion Day’ dominate inner-city suburbs, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne. Statues of Australian heroes like James Cook, the first European to reach Australia’s shores, are now routinely defaced and even toppled. There are now more than 80 local councils who refuse to hold citizenship ceremonies on 26 January.

Even those Australians who wouldn’t dream of smashing up a statue are still, understandably, sympathetic towards arguments about both past colonial horrors and the shocking inequalities that blight the modern day (the life expectancy of an aboriginal male is 8.6 years lower than that of a non-aboriginal male). What’s more, Australia Day is not as ‘traditional’ as many imagine. There has only been a nationally recognised public holiday on 26 January since 1988. Until recently, it was not difficult to imagine Australia Day being renamed and / or having its date changed.

So why has the mood changed so rapidly, wrongfooting the likes of the Australian Venue Co? Polls now suggest that more than two-thirds of the country want Australia Day to remain on 26 January, a slight increase from recent years. It’s no coincidence that this is roughly the same percentage of Australians who voted against the ‘Voice’, a constitutional referendum held last year that sought to establish an indigenous ‘advisory’ body to the federal parliament.

What the referendum revealed was that ordinary Australians are allergic to the hectoring of their supposed betters. The political class, the corporate world and celebrities told them to vote Yes and branded them racist if they refused. The undertone of much of the campaign was that Australian nationhood is something to be ashamed of and atone for.

Instead, the Voice referendum gave expression to the pride ordinary Aussies quietly feel in the modern, tolerant and diverse nation that Australia has become. And it showed they won’t take kindly to major corporations telling them to think otherwise. What a shame that some in the business world still haven’t got the memo.