As Australia Day approaches, we once again face a barrage of calls to change the date of our national celebration. Even Woolies, failing to learn the lessons of corporate overreach in the recent Voice campaign, seems to have given in.

In public schools across Australia, teachers are refusing to talk about the meaning of other national holidays such as Easter and Christmas. Whether you’re a Christian or not, surely teaching our kids that Easter commemorates resurrection of Jesus after his crucifixion, or Christmas celebrates Jesus’ birth shouldn’t be that controversial.

We are left at a turning point. With some of our most treasured national holidays either under threat or devoid of meaning, what does this say about the survival of our national culture? Do we end up at a point where all we can agree on is a holiday for a sporting event (and let’s be honest, even Melbourne Cup Day is on the nose with Gen Z and Millennials).

The Australia Day debate is the epicentre of our contemporary culture wars. The ABC’s Triple J changed the date of its annual Hottest 100 countdown in 2018, and councils across Australia have for some years increasingly shifted the traditional Australia Day Citizenship ceremonies to more “neutral” days.

But it needn’t be so. For the past 75 years, holding citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day has been intricately linked to Australian nationality. The Chifley Labor Government even proclaimed the Nationality & Citizenship Act on Australia Day 1949, creating for the first time the status of Australian citizenship (prior to this, Australians were considered British subjects). Then Labor Immigration Minister Arthur Calwell said of the Act in 1948, “It will symbolise not only our own pride in Australia, but also our willingness to offer a share in our future to the new Australians we are seeking in such vast numbers.” It was a deliberate decision to proclaim this Act on Australia Day, our day of national celebration, as a welcome to current and future Australians.

The choice of date for Australia Day was initially a NSW-led occasion marking the arrival of the First Fleet in Sydney Cove in 1788, but by 1888 celebrations had spread across the colonies in Australia. It grew to become a day for Australians to celebrate their own national identity, distinct from Britain and her Empire, as well engendering national unity between the former colonies. By 1935, all Australian states and territories had adopted the name ‘Australia Day’ to mark the date. It was Robert Menzies in 1940 who became the first prime minister to toast the date and deliver a special Australia Day broadcast on the BBC. International recognition of Australia’s national day came soon after, with US President Truman and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshida sending messages of congratulations in 1952.

While Robert Menzies had declared Australia Day a public holiday in 1950, it was, rather remarkably, Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating who passed legislation in 1994 to make Australia Day a permanent nationwide public holiday. Menzies declared that “patriotism requires due symbols”, and Australia Day was one of these.

The meaning of Australia Day, like our nation’s culture and citizenry, is not static and nor should it be. Australia in 2024 is a vastly different country from that in 1888, let alone 1788 and earlier. Today, we don’t dwell too much on the arrival of the First Fleet and the convicts and pioneering British settlers who made their lives in a distant land. Rather, by reflecting on the breadth of our nation’s long history, we celebrate Australia as a prosperous and tolerant multicultural liberal democracy, a place that is the destination of choice for millions of migrants from around the world.

A sense of history, national pride and self-respect, these sentiments underpinned the aspiration of Australia Day. It is a day not stuck in time but rooted in history. Australia Day represents, in the best Burkean tradition, a partnership between the living, the dead and those yet to be born. Let’s not trash it; rather, on Australia Day let’s celebrate our great nation and all its people, past, present, and emerging.

By Georgina Downer, CEO, Robert Menzies Institute

Originally published on Sky News Australia on 26 January 2024.