Australia Day is back in a big way. Australians are not normally given to overt displays of deep-felt patriotism (the execrable ‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie’ chant at the cricket notwithstanding, and even then, the Brits and their Barmy Army leave us for dust). To be dubbed a ‘flag-flappin’ bastard’ is a deadly insult.
Except on Australia Day. It’s the one day of the year, to borrow a phrase from Alan Seymour, that waving flags, wearing flags and painting ourselves with flags is normal.
Naturally, the left hate it. ‘Cronulla capes’, they sneer, asserting that anyone who carries an Australian flag on Australia Day is just one Bunnings sausage away from beating some poor, cowering brown immigrant type. Organisers of the former Big Day Out music festivals, held on the Australia Day long weekend, went so far as to ban Australian flags altogether.
Such right-on disdain ignores that brown immigrant folks are to be seen in droves, with their little flags, too, at Australia Day events. Many of them because it’s the day that they become Australian citizens. Something they clearly regard as worth celebrating.

On the other hand, it’s glaring just how pale so-called ‘Invasion Day’ events are. These annual lefty gripefests are a gaggle of blindingly white faces. And that’s just the ‘Aborigines’.
And, like most ‘progressive’ causes, the volume of their aggrieved bellowing, not to mention the absurdly disproportionate and sympathetic coverage they garner from the ABC, should never be mistaken for mass popularity. In fact, they are regularly outnumbered by the happily flag-waving masses flocking to celebrate their country, whether of birth or adoption.
This year, more so than ever. Apparently in conscious backlash against the furiously finger-wagging elite, Australia’s national day drew bumper crowds. ‘Invasion Day’ events, on the other hand, were a pale – literally as well as metaphorically – shadow of what little popular support they could ever garner. In Sydney, a paltry 8,000 whiners marched against Australia Day. Three times that number flocked to Bondi beach, to wear their Australian-flag bathers and celebrate. In Melbourne, where ‘progressive’ protests are a way of life, barely twice that number assembled for their Big Lefty Day Out.
It’s not just people having a day at the beach, or a barbecue, either. Opinion polling is showing a marked increase in support for Australia Day and for keeping its date as January 26. Not just a one-off, either: the trend has been positive for several years. This year, not just a majority supported Australia Day, but support was nearly double opposition. Even women and young people, the two most susceptible groups to ‘progressive’ ideological crusades, are strongly supporting our national day.
So, what happened? It’s simple: the left overplayed their hand and stirred Menzies’ ‘Forgotten People’ to life.
Unlike the activist class, most normal folk don’t overly concern themselves with nurturing a never-ending sense of political grievance. They don’t march and they don’t carry placards or chant slogans: they just get on with life. It takes a lot to stir them up.
In this case, a whole lot of sneering and denigrating their country did it. Australians, old and new, just grew fed up with hearing the nation they are quietly proud of endlessly trashed by the activist grievance-mongers. With seeing Australian flags burned, statues vandalised and the non-stop bellowing about ‘the colony’, Australians are just fed up.
But, in their characteristic fashion, rather than have a big, ol’, whiny march of their own, they celebrated. They flocked to the beach, to mass picnics at places like Melbourne’s Federation Square or Canberra’s Lake Burley Griffin. Thousands of them packed town halls across the nation to be sworn in as newly minted Australian citizens.
As Aboriginal Australian politician Nyunggai Warren Mundine put it, “People are suddenly realising they like this country.” They’re ‘sick and tired of being bullied’ by the loudmouth left. Another Aboriginal Australian, opposition Indigenous Affairs spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, said it was “incredibly heartening to see the decrease in attendance at anti-Australia Day rallies and the increase in support for celebrating our national day on January 26”.
It’s not surprising, too, that the wave of overt enthusiasm for Australia Day follows the failed ‘Voice’ referendum. The referendum defeat and Australia Day are both about the same thing: ordinary Australians rejecting the politics of racial separatism. They did so loudly and clearly in October 2023. More importantly, they did so against a tidal wave of elite badgering. With everyone from academics and celebrities, big business and sports stars, hectoring them that they must vote ‘Yes’, or be damned as bigots and racists, Australians quietly told them to go and get stuffed.
When the extraordinary result rolled in – so overwhelming that the vote-counting was superfluous within an hour of polls closing – Australians realised something too many had forgotten: that they were united and they were strong. Quiet patriotism and the ties of family, friendship and community, counted more than a massively funded elite campaign. Australians realised that they could say, openly and loudly, that they love their country, united under one flag. The paper tigers of the elite simply crumpled and blew away.
Some of the elite are starting to get the message, too. In an inversion of ‘go woke, go broke’, thousands of pubs and restaurants proudly announced Australia Day events this year. When a pub giant, Australian Venue Co, announced late last year that its 234 venues nationwide would not be observing Australia Day – citing the roster of woke grievances – the backlash was immediate and intense. Supermarket giant Woolworths similarly backed down from last year’s refusal to stock Australia Day merchandise.
This year, by contrast, pubs and other venues went all-out on the Australians. One hotel, in uber-‘progressive’ Adelaide is promoting a month-long Australia Day celebration. Kent Town Hotel owner Tom Hannah acknowledged that patrons were ‘sick and tired’ of being browbeaten by elites. We’re publicans, Hannah said, not preachers. “We love this country and we think people should be allowed to celebrate it.”
Besides, it’s just good business sense. If Australian Venue Co wants to go woke and go broke, that’s their bad move. “As Napoleon Bonaparte said, never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake,” Hannah said.
A South Australian venue chain, the Hurley Group, announced its ‘Oz Music Day’ event on Australia Day – a pointed dig at taxpayer-funded radio Triple J’s refusal, for the past eight years, to host its ‘Hottest 100’ competition on January 26. Pubs should be “in the fun business, not the political correctness business”, owner Peter Hurley declared.
They’ve obviously paid attention to independent supermarket Drakes Supermarkets. When Woolworths announced its Australia Day ban, Drakes director John-Paul Drake publicly upbraided the supermarket giant, dubbing them ‘Wokeworths’. Drakes experienced a major spike in sales last January. Founder Roger Drake chastised big corporations for misreading the Australian room.
Instead of listening to a millennial communications graduate with a TikTok feed, Roger Drake says he practices ‘MBWA, Management By Walking Around’.
Some in the big end of town need to do a bit of MBWA with the public when it comes to telling them how to think and act,” Drake said. “The public has had enough of all this correctness and wokeness. I don’t care if you are black, white or brindle – we are one nation… the average punter has had enough of [division]. We saw what happened with the voice. People don’t like being lectured to and they don’t like being divided. It is a day of unity.”
In just over 200 years from that January day in 1788, Australians have built a prosperous, free democracy. One of the 10 best nations for quality of life. One of the 10 happiest countries in the world. The quiet majority of us think that’s definitely something worth celebrating on the day it began.
And we’re not going to be bullied into being quiet about it any more.