Australia’s national day devolved into a display of deep divisions on Monday as thousands took to the streets in competing demonstrations that laid bare the country’s struggle over identity, history, race and immigration. As some Australians marked the traditional holiday by hanging out at barbecues and attending citizenship ceremonies, others turned out for rallies that embodied fundamentally divergent visions of what the country stands for and who is, or isn’t, welcome within its borders.
January 26 is also the date Britain established New South Wales as a penal colony with ships arriving in Sydney carrying both colonists and convicts. For thousands of Australians, the day is a chance to celebrate nation and modern accomplishment. But for Indigenous Australians, who make up around four percent of the country’s population of 27 million people, that date marks the start of generations of devastating loss to their cultures and communities at the hands of European settlers — earning it an alternative name “Invasion Day.”
Indigenous Voices Call for Solidarity
The annual Invasion Day rally at Sydney’s Hyde Park kicked off at 10 a.m. with a sombre homage to the victims of a recent shooting in a country town in New South Wales. Indigenous speakers later spoke to the crowd about issues that still devastate indigenous communities, such as repatriation of land stolen from them; rapid deaths in police custody; and to not be divided against rising nationalism throughout the nation.
Speaker Gwenda Stanley had a powerful message on the pressures faced by Aboriginals, and how they related to wider anxieties around immigration and national identity. She called on new Australians to be in solidarity with Indigenous people, arguing that immigrants had contributed to the survival of the country. Stanley also singled out Pauline Hanson, whose populist party One Nation has surged in recent polls as the right-wing opposition implodes. She said her message was to remind people that support for Indigenous rights couldn’t be limited to symbolic gestures on a single day of the year.
Anti-Immigration Sentiment Draws Counter-Protests
Within hours of the end of the Invasion Day rally, another, almost completely opposite-visioned demonstration was kicking off just down street. At noon, hundreds of protesters turned up with Australian flags attached to sticks for an event organised by March for Australia*, a group accused of having ties with neo-Nazi groups. The anti-immigration rally is part of increasing frustration from some Australians about historically high immigration over the past few years.
The issue of immigration has garnered extra attention as Australia struggles with an extreme housing shortage and a high cost of living that have left many residents in financial difficulty. One in two people in the country was either born overseas or has a parent who was, and immigration policy is an especially sensitive and fraught subject. Simultaneous counterprotests took place in cities around the country, with Invasion Day rallies and March for Australia protests also held at several sites.
A Country in Search of Common Ground
The competing protests underscore the challenge confronting Australian leaders in trying to negotiate increasingly polarized sentiments on national identity and values. Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese led a citizenship ceremony and called on Australians to rally around common cause over division, although his message appeared to have been lost amid the clamor of stark disagreements taking place on streets nationwide.
The public mood also is mixed about Australia Day itself in the context of the debate. Every year on January 26, protesters call for the government to stop celebrating Australia Day or celebrate it at a different time of year; one that does not fall on the date of colonisation. But according to a recent survey conducted by the Sydney Morning Herald, that support is misguided, Australians have expressed stronger support for keeping the holiday where it currently sits than in previous years, with a record number of its population telling pollsters that they won’t accept efforts to change the holiday from his current date. The stark division between celebrants of the day and recognisers of colonisation does not appear to be diminishing, relegating Australia to its timeless existential struggle with questions about who we are as a people past, present and future identity.
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