Here we go again. It’s as predictable as the hot summer weather.
The post-Christmas Australian summer brings three certainties: hot cross buns in the supermarkets on Boxing Day, crowded beaches and the chattering lefties having an almighty bloody sook about Australia Day.
Australia’s high commissioner to Britain, Stephen Smith, has signalled to organisers that he will not attend an annual Australia Day gala dinner, a year after he cited sensitivities around celebrating the day.
He said, before he backflipped faster than a Cirque du Soleil performer.
Australia’s high commissioner to Britain, Stephen Smith, has backtracked on his plan to skip a black tie Australia Day gala dinner in London, after he was “able to rearrange his official travel plans”.
Or, more likely, he was dragged into line by a frantic PM whose poll numbers are tanking.
Mr Smith, who was hand-picked by Anthony Albanese to take the top diplomatic posting, ignited uproar after he informed organisers he would not attend the fundraising event celebrating the national day because he may not be in London.
After the Australian revealed his plans to snub Australia Day festivities for a second year in a row, Mr Smith has rearranged his schedule and will now deliver a “personal message” from the Prime Minister during the dinner.
Something along the lines of ‘Please, please, please, please vote for me in March’?
Meanwhile, Albo’s captain’s pick has gone and handed the opposition leader yet another brickbat with which to bash the PM. Dutton wasted no time in smacking the government across the back of the head.
Peter Dutton has criticised Mr Smith for his decision to skip Australia Day festivities, declaring that if the high commissioner is “ashamed” of the national day he “should be on the next flight home”.
“The Prime Minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs should be very clear on this issue and they should direct our UK High Commissioner – and indeed any other High Commissioner or Ambassador – that we should celebrate Australia Day on the day with great pride,” the Opposition Leader said.
“We’re the greatest country in the world and we should be prepared to celebrate it both here in Australia and in our posts overseas.
“The Prime Minister owns this as the UK High Commissioner was his captain’s pick. And the PM should pick up the phone and sort this out today.
“What other developed country refuses to acknowledge its national day? If Stephen Smith is ashamed of Australia Day, he should be on the next flight home.”
He also needs to pull his head out of his tiny leftist echo-chamber. For all the megaphone bellowing and screaming from a tiny minority of leftists and permanently aggrieved professional ‘Aborigines’ (mostly distinguished only by their deathly pale complexions and their addiction to taxpayer’s money), the vast majority of Australians quietly and proudly celebrate their national day.
The black-tie gala, run by the Australia Day Foundation, has been a fixture of the London social calendar for two decades, and has been attended by some of the nation’s most prominent business and industry leaders living in Britain.
The event has also attracted some of Australia’s greatest exports, including Kylie Minogue, Delta Goodrem, Natalie Imbruglia, Tim Minchin and band Human Nature, and showcased food cooked by celebrity chefs including Maggie Beer and Neil Perry.
The annual celebration of the Australian-Britain relationship will be held at the Peninsula Hotel in London on January 25 and will be attended by 400 ticketholders, with Mr Smith indicating to organisers last week he would not be among them.
Until, like Woolworths (Countdown) last year, he got torn a new one. When Woollies announced last year that it would not be stocking Australia Day merchandise – again, citing so-called ‘sensitivities’ – the backlash was swift and brutal. This year, the chain went out of its way to publicise that there will be special Australia Day sections in every supermarket.
The left can talk all they want, but the quiet Australians will walk where they bloody well please.
