IN SEARCH OF A SUITABLE DATE

 

Just before Christmas, the Iraqi president visited a Christian church in that country and as well as announcing that henceforth Christmas Day would be a public holiday, he paid homage to the Assyrians as the indigenous peoples of Iraq.

“How do you feel about that?” I asked my wife. The response was swift and devastating. “After a millenium of persecution and genocide, what are we supposed to do with such an empty gesture? Trust me, more than anyone, we know how the Indigenous Australians feel about Australia Day.”

Iraq of course, is not Australia. Australia has striven in various ways of late to recognise the hardship caused to Indigenous Australians by Anglo-Celtic settlement. Iraq celebrates as a national holiday, Republic Day, being the day that the Hashemite ruling dynasty was murdered in 1958, as well as National Day, being the day that Iraq gained independence from the British in 1932. These are, unless you happen to be a monarchist, politically neutral days which had a profound effect upon the shaping of modern Iraq and which can be celebrated by citizens of all religions and ethnicities.

Australia Day, is however, the only Australian national day and it is neither politically neutral, nor has the event it commemorates had a profound effect upon the formation of modern Australia. Instead, it is celebrated on 26 January in order to commemorate the arrival of the First Fleet in this country in 1788. That event did not lead to the foundation of a country called Australia. What it did do, was to lead to the foundation of New South Wales as a British colony, which is why as early as 1818, the date was celebrated in that colony as “Foundation Day.” As far as the rest of us go, and by us I mean Australian citizens of British descent whose ancestors were not transported to or settled in the British colony of New South Wales, the event is not nation forming in any way whatsoever.

It is the widespread concern that commemorating Australia Day on 26 January triumphalises the appropriation of this land from its original owners and the consternation they have expressed at celebrating a day that for them marks in invasion of their country and their dispossession that has focused public debate as to the suitability of the said date. Most importantly, it should not escape our attention that as far back as 1936, the same date was declared a Day of Mourning by the Aborigines Progressive Association and the Australian Aborigines League as a protest against the “Whiteman's seizure of our country.” Yet even if it were not for this unfortunate chapter in Australia’s history which needs to be acknowledged in full, using the anniversary of the foundation of a British colony as a day to unite all Australians would still raise questions as to its appropriateness, suitability and relevance of that date to arguably the majority of modern Australians.

Australia as a modern nation came into being on 1 January 1901, with the federation of the British colonies on the continent and commentators within our community have suggested that marking this date with a holiday would be eminently more suitable. Yet there are both practical and political considerations that mitigate against the adoption of this as a more suitable or inclusive date. Firstly, we already observe a perfectly decent holiday on that date, New Year’s Day. Secondly, and most importantly, while Federation is undoubtedly a significant event, it is arguable that there existed no Australians in its aftermath. Prior to 1949, Australia held Dominion Status within the British Empire and its inhabitants were considered to be British subjects. It was only with the passage of the 1948 Australian Nationality and Citizenship Act that an official Australian citizenship was created and it could be argued that this day one in which an emerging sense of nationhood was formally recognised, is worth commemorating as a day that unites all Australians.

Inconveiently, the Act came into effect on 26 January 1949, so we are no better off than where we started. Further, while Australian citizens were created at that time, the fact remained that the privilege of becoming one was not open to all people. Just a few years earlier, in 1941, Australian Prime Minister John Curtin articulated a restrictive vision for Australia that if in effect today, would have excluded a large portion of the Australian community: “This country shall remain forever the home of the descendants of those people who came here in peace in order to establish in the South Seas an outpost of the British race. Our laws have proclaimed the standard of a White Australia.” The celebration of this type of citizenship, informed as it was by the White Australia Policy, at this time, would be problematic to say the least.

Curtin, however, was prescient enough to know that as a country evolves, so to does its conception of citizenship. In the same speech, he proceeded to acknowledge that the Australian understanding of belonging is not set in stone: “If we were to depart from it [the White Australia Policy] we should do so only as a result of free consent.” The process however, took a long time. In 1949, shortly after the Nationality and Citizenship Act came into effect, the War-time Refugees Removal Act 1949 was passed. Ostensibly enacted in order to empower the minister of Immigration: “to force any person to depart the country who had been allowed to enter as a result of the war and had not since left,” its real aim was to give the federal government the explicit authority to deport non-white foreigners who had arrived in Australia during the Second World War.

Mass-migration and Australia’s post-War development slowly eroded the official conception of Australia as a bastion of whiteness. In 1950, the External Affairs Minister Percy Spender instigated the Colombo Plan, whereby students from Asian countries were permitted entry into the country to study at Australian universities and in 1957, non-Europeans who had fifteen year’s residence in Australia became eligible for citizenship. In discussing the newly passed Migration Act in 1958, Immigration Minister Alick Downer announced that “distinguished and highly qualified Asians' might immigrate” and in March 1966, Prime Minister Harold Holt stated in the press that Australia no longer had a White Australia policy, but instead had a “restricted immigration policy.” Indeed, on 24 March 1966, during the House of Representatives debate on the passage of the Migration Act, government MP Sir Keith Cameron Wilson stated: “From now on there will not be in any of our laws or in any of our regulations anything that discriminates against migrants on the grounds of colour or race.”

For the first time ever, Australian government policy was formally articulated in such a way so as allow the possibility of any and all people, of whichever ethnic background or nationality, the possibility of becoming an Australian. Is not this date, without which the Whitlam Government’s formal abolition of the White Australia Policy in 1973, its passage of the Racial Discrimination Act in 1975 and Fraser Government’s passage of the Migration Act on 1978 in which the selection of migrants based on country of origin was completely removed from official policy may have been possible, a date which forms the true foundation of the modern Australian identity as encompassing any and all creeds, colours, ethnicities and language groups worth celebrating as a national day of inclusivity which unites all Australians and not just the particular strain of European who happened to establish themselves here first?

The 26th of January is a significant day in the Australian calendar and it should remain such as a national day of remembrance and reflection. If we are truly however, looking for a date that all Australians can celebrate, one could do worse than look beyond 24 March, a particularly convenient date, if you happen to be a Greek-Australian.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 25 January 2025